Federal Courts in the Early Republic: Kentucky, 1789-1816 9781400871322

Citation preview

FEDERAL COURTS IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC KENTUCKY 1789-1816

FEDERAL COURTS IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC KENTUCKY 1789-1816

MARY K. BONSTEEL TACHAU

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Copyright © 1978 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Paul Mellon Fund of Princeton University Press This book has been composed in Linotype Caledonia Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

To Eric

Contents Acknowledgments

ix 3

INTRODUCTION

The Style, Structure, and Jurisdiction of the Courts

14

CHAPTER T W O

Judge Harry Innes

31

CHAPTER THREE

The Personnel of the Courts

54

CHAPTER FOUR

The Procedures of the Courts

77

CHAPTER FIVE

The Internal Revenue Laws and Their Enforcement

95

CHAPTEB ONE

CHAPTER SIX

Criminal Charges in the Courts

127

CHAPTER SEVEN

Private Civil Suits in the Courts

149

CHAPTER EIGHT

Land Cases in the Courts

167 191

CONCLUSION

Private Case Docket of the Federal Courts in Kentucky

201

Judgments on Private Suits in Kentucky Federal Courts

203

Cases Brought by the United States in Kentucky Federal Courts

205

APPENDIX D.

Harry Innes's 1785 Book Order

208

APPENDIX E.

Glossary of Terms

210

APPENDIX A.

APPENDIX B.

APPENDIX C.

Bibliography

213

Index

231 TABLES

TABLE 1. Disposition of Private Law Cases, 1789-1816

165

TABLE 2.

176

Disposition of Ejectment Cases, 1789-1816

Acknowledgments HE greatest pleasure in finishing a work of this kind lies in rememTbering the friends, colleagues, and family whose generosity is reflected in the pages. Without the help of some of them, the book might never have been written; without the help of others it would certainly have been poorer. It is a pleasure to acknowledge publicly the gratitude that I hope I have already conveyed privately to these people: Mary E. Young, for years of sustaining encouragement; Robert M. Ireland, for suggesting the topic; Kermit L. Hall, for thorough criticism; Patricia Watlington, James R. Broussard, and Richard H. Kohn, for enlightening insights; Stanley I. Kutler and Arthur J. Slavin, for useful advice; Kathryn T. Preyer, Harold M. Hyman, Stanley N. Katz, and Melvin I. Urofsky, for timely suggestions; William E. Read, James R. Merritt, and Patrick A. Lovell, for guidance through the labyrinthine mysteries of law and legal history; James R. Bentley, and the staffs of The Filson Club, the Kentucky Historical Society, the University of Louisville Libraries, the Special Collections Department of the Margaret I. King Library of the University of Kentucky, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, and the National Archives, for true professionalism and many personal kindnesses; The Board of Trustees of the University of Louisville, for special leave to accomplish the research, and the Research Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences, for typing and travel assistance; Patricia R. Bonsteel and William E. Bonsteel, for hospitality during extended research trips; Katherine H. Tachau-Auerbach and Susan McKee Tachau, for their confidence; David Brandeis Tachau, for sharing his stylistic gifts; and Eric S. Tachau, for his uncommon wisdom.

IX

FEDERAL COURTS IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC KENTUCKY 1789-1816

Introduction N 1922, Charles Warren published The Supreme Court in United States History, a pioneering work concerned with the impact of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary on American history from 1789 to 1918.1 The book was immediately recognized as an important contribution toward understanding the third, and often neglected, branch of government. Among the complimentary letters Warren received was one from United States Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis. He wrote that Warren had "performed an important public service," because "a better understanding of the function of our Court is an essential of political and social health." Like many other readers, Justice Brandeis found that the book inspired ideas for further research. He suggested in the conclusion of his letter: "Much having makes me hunger more. Have you ever thought of writing on the lower Federal Courts? A consideration of their functioning in the past would be interesting."2 But Warren's investigations led him in other directions, and Brandeis's casual remark lay forgotten among Warren's correspondence. Six years later, the suggestion was repeated from another source. In response to the public interest generated by passage of the Judiciary Act of 1925, Felix Frankfurter and James M. Landis wrote The Business of the Supreme Court.3 Their book was intended to explain "the surface technicalities governing the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts." It also evaluated the role played by the judiciary in the balances of power between the states and the national government, and between "growingly divergent economic interests."4 In a passage describing the problems of the circuits and the caseload of the Supreme Court, the authors repeated the Brandeis suggestion, which was probably unknown to them:

I

Our national history will not have been adequately written until the history of our judicial systems can be adequately told through monograph studies of individual courts. . . . Nor shall we be able to know 1 Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 1789-1918 (Boston, 1922). References hereafter are to rev. ed. (Boston, 1926). 2 Louis D. Brandeis to Charles Warren, June 23, 1922, Charles Warren Papers, Box 1, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 3 Felix Frankfurter and James M. Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court: A Study in the Federal Judicial System (New York, 1928). * Ibid., vi.

3

INTRODUCTION

how our courts function until an effective system of judicial sta­ tistics becomes part of our tradition. . . . What is needed is an annual detailed analysis of litigation, the courts whence cases come, the dispositions made of them, the nature of the questions involved, 5 etc., etc., etc. Although the suggestion was here made publicly rather than pri­ vately, it too has been largely overlooked. 6 Three recent books have examined different aspects of lower federal courts, but none has been as comprehensive or as methodically analytical as Frankfurter and Landis proposed. 7 It is the purpose of the present study to pursue their suggestion by a systematic examination of the lower federal courts of one state dur­ ing the first generation after the adoption of the Constitution. It is not an investigation to test any particular hypothesis, but an inquiry, as in the original etymological meaning of the word history. In the course of the research many tantalizing tangents have been explored, ranging from technical legal problems to the relationships between the court and its personnel and important events and persons in na­ tional history. But the findings that are reported are sharply limited to those which affected the federal courts in Kentucky. This is, there­ fore, an institutional history with an intentional focus upon the courts themselves. Although legal scholars interested in substantive and juris5

Ibid., 52. Two recent exceptions are: R. Kent Newmyer, "Justice Joseph Story on Circuit and a Neglected Phase of American Legal History," American Journal of Legal History, xiv (1970), 112-135, and Bradley T. Johnson, Reports of Cases Decided by Chief Justice Chase in the Circuit Court of the United, States Fourth Circuit 1865-1869, introd. Feme B. Hyman and Harold M. Hyman (New York, 1972 [orig. publ. New York, 1876]), v-xxvii. 7 Julius Goebel, Jr., Antecedents and Beginnings to 1800, in Paul A. Freund, ed., The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court, ι (New York, 1971). (Hereafter cited as Antecedents and Beginnings.) However, Goebel was principally interested in the lower courts as they related to the United States Supreme Court, and his analyses of cases were directed toward illustrating ques­ tions of substantive law. A survey of the numbers and kinds of cases docketed in the federal district and circuit courts is included in Dwight F. Henderson's Courts For a New Nation (Washington, 1971). Henderson's purpose was to evaluate the need for those courts, and he did not systematically examine the disposition of the cases. Marvin Schick's Learned Hand's Court (Baltimore, 1970) is a study of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1941 to 1951. As the author pointed out in his preface, the contextual limitation of a single decade distorts the work of the court because it overlooks the court's previous history and does not pursue the ultimate disposition of all the cases arising during that decade. 6

4

INTRODUCTION

dictional questions may find some useful information, I wrote this study for historians and others without formal training in law.8 Source material for this subject is abundant. AU the essential federal court records are still housed in the old Federal Building in Frankfort, Kentucky. The most important of these, the Order Books of the courts, have been made more accessible by a microfilming project conducted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They have also microfilmed the Complete Record of the Seventh Circuit Court, an incomplete collection of case papers containing illuminating material. (Copies of the microfilm are in the Special Collections Department of the Margaret I. King Library of the University of Kentucky, Lexington.) Other court records were made available by the clerk of the United States Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky at Lexington. The chronological limits of the study were determined by the tenure of the first judge of the United States Court for the District of Kentucky, Harry Innes. Innes kept an astonishing number and variety of his personal papers. His descendants deposited them in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, where they fill twentyeight volumes, capriciously numbered and arranged. Additional Innes papers are held by the Filson Club in Louisville, Kentucky, and by the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort. During the years while he sat alone on the Kentucky federal bench, Innes copied ninety-two of his opinions (which, according to custom, were not included in the court records) in a small leather-bound book that was found by chance in the office of the clerk of the United States Court for the Western District of Kentucky at Louisville. An important body of related government records is held by the National Archives in Washington. Supplemental material is in the manuscript collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford; and in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In order to discover what happened in the federal courts in Kentucky, my fundamental research technique was to transpose these scattered sources into more manageable form by virtually reconstructing the cases in a card file. This involved copying the work of the courts recorded in the Order Books and then setting up a separate card for each case. All of the significant actions taken on a case were 8 The distinction between institutional legal history and legal history emphasizing substantive law is described by Herbert Alan Johnson, "American Colonial Legal Histoiy: A Historiographical Interpretation," in Alden T. Vaughan and George Athan Billias, eds., Perspectives on Early American History: Essays in Honor of Richard B. Morris (New York, 1973), 262-269.

5

INTRODUCTION

noted on each card. The technique thus invented produced a kind of evidence heretofore absent from legal history: the disposition of each case and, collectively, the day in, day out work of the courts. With eleven Order Books completed during the period under examination, containing 4,689 pages of notations on 2,290 cases, this system made possible quantitative as well as qualitative evaluation. Because of the time limitations involved in working with microfilm borrowed through interlibrary loan, the collection of evidence was well under way before the background reading was completed. While this reversal of the usual procedure resulted in some initial disorientation, it had a fortuitous consequence. I had very few preconceived ideas about what conclusions to expect, and the evidence was gathered without commitment to a particular frame of reference. By the time I had fully assimilated the theses of other writers, I had compiled a large body of evidence against which their generalizations could be tested. The unique opportunity provided by immediate and constant reference to the concrete evidence of the courts' own records led me, in many instances, to conclusions which differ from those of other students of American legal and constitutional history. The data, in fact, so frequently contradict so much of the conventional wisdom that a reexamination of many popular assumptions may be in order. It is, of course, possible that the Kentucky federal courts were atypical. Whether that proves to be the case can only be known after a research design similar to the one used in this study is applied to the records of other contemporaneous courts. With the growing availability and accessibility of early court records, one hopes that they will be used to seek comparisons with the findings presented here and to gain a more comprehensive understanding of this segment of the national past. 9 Ever since the Works Progress Administration surveyed federal records in the states in the 1930s, it has been known that federal court records were available even where they were not easily accessible. It seems now somewhat surprising that they have not been used. Ap9 A convenient listing of the location of many federal district and circuit court papers is in Goebel, Antecedents and Beginnings, 815. Some federal court records have been inventoried and microfilmed by the National Archives. An example of the potential for reevaluation may be seen in an article based upon the federal circuit court records for the District of Georgia, which presents a significant revision of the circumstances relating to the case that prompted the Eleventh Amendment. Doyle Mathis, "Chisholm v. Georgia: Background and Settlement," Journal of American History, LIV (1967), 19-29.

6

INTRODUCTION

parently, most scholars, if they thought about the lower federal courts, assumed that they already knew in general terms what went on in them. If mentioned at all, they are described as inferior courts in every sense of that word. It was in the early federal circuit courts that the travesties of the Sedition Act of 1798 were carried out; it was in an early federal district court that Judge John Pickering so misbehaved that he was later impeached. Not until Robert Trimble of Kentucky was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1826 was any judge of a lower federal court elevated to the high court. This fact suggests that the lower federal courts were not seen as useful training grounds for judicial eminence. Almost all the courts of the new nation are believed to have been so anti-British that they ignored the proprieties of their English legal traditions. Lawyers are said to have been poorly trained and unpopular.10 A recent study suggests that courts were governed more by politics than by law.11 When, to these impressions, are added Charles Warren's assertions that the people of at least five states were at war with the federal judiciary during this time, it has seemed reasonable to conclude that the lower federal courts are best forgotten.12 If the third branch of government made any contribution toward the permanence and stability of the new republic, it has seemed that only the court of John Marshall did so. American historians interested in the early federal judiciary have, therefore, tended to concentrate on the United States Supreme Court, its members, and its most significant cases. In doing so, they have been aided by the Court itself, which recognized from the beginning that its decisions must be understandable if they were to be acceptable to the citizenry. Supreme Court opinions are written in terms that any interested literate person can comprehend, and sometimes are truly eloquent. That public interest of which the Court has always been mindful has been well served by historians who have expanded the language of the court to explain the policy issues and the public consequences of what were, at heart, legal questions. But to move from the Supreme Court to the lower federal courts means to move from constitutional history to legal history, and that is another world altogether. It is a world into which a nonlawyer ven10 Charles Warren, A History of the American Bar (Boston, 1911), 212-214. Maxwell Bloomfield, American Lawyers in a Changing Society, 1776-1876 (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 39-58. 11 Richard E. Ellis, The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (New York, 1971). 12 Warren, Supreme Court, i, 366-400; 541-565; 633-652.

7

INTRODUCTION

tures cautiously. Many historians have doubtless been chastened, at least vicariously, by the reprimands delivered by Julius Goebel, Jr. A lawyer-historian of stature and candor, Goebel scathingly denounced what he considered the presumptuousness of historians who attempted to deal with matters that he thought were better left to lawyers. So contemptuously did he dismiss several such pioneering efforts by people trained in history that his words have doubtless had a chilling effect on many others. 13 Even historians who have never heard of Goebel are easily deterred from working in early lower court records. They are unlike any other official American documents. The law then had a language all its own, a highly stylized English interspersed with Latin. The English was not like spoken or literary English, and the Latin was not the Latin of Cicero or Caesar. Together they formed a strange tongue that had been brewed out of the melting pot of English histoxy to mark the guideposts of English law as it was understood (and misunderstood) in these former English colonies. Until the reforms of the codification movement of the mid-nineteenth century, all court cases at the trial level were pursued in forms of action that have since been superseded and largely forgotten. Not only is the nature of a grievance obscured by language barriers, but also the methods of resolving it seem almost incomprehensibly ritualistic. There are no adequate guidebooks, ancient or modern, to help one through this most unfamiliar terrain. What was once so obvious and elementary that it did not seem worth writing down and explaining is now elusive and abstruse to a conventionally trained historian. Everyone confronting such obstacles understands and shares the lament of a law clerk of that era: "How many hours have I hunted, how many books turned up, for what three minutes of explanation from any tolerable lawyer would have made clear to me."14 But those who have some acquaintance with these archaic procedures and practices do not ask the questions for which historians need the answers. Lawyers with training in legal history are not particularly 13

Julius Goebel, Jr. and T. Raymond Naughton, Law Enforcement in Colonial New York: A Study in Criminal Procedure (1664-1776) (Montclair, N.J., 1970), xxxii-xxxvi. See also, Goebel's review of Dorothy S. Towle, ed., Records of the Vice-Admiralty Court of Rhode Island, 1716-1752, in American Historical Review, XLiii (1938), 403-406. 14 Henry C. Van Schaack, Life of Peter Van Schaack, LLD. (New York, 1842), 9. The problems and significance of early court records are described by Elizabeth Gaspar Brown, "Frontier Justice: Wayne County 1796-1836," Am. J. Legal Hist, xvi (1972), 126-153.

8

INTRODUCTION

interested in how law affected the general population, or how the work of the courts interacted with other institutions. Legal training emphasizes precedent, the isolation of topical issues, and the develop­ ment of legal doctrines. The analytic skills of lawyer-historians have therefore been principally devoted to discovering the history of Amer­ ican law rather than the legal history of the American people. For example, many lawyers have responded to the challenge of Chancellor James Kent's undocumented assertion that when he became a judge of the New York Supreme Court in 1798, "we had no law of our own, and nobody knew what it was." 15 One group of legal historians joined Dean Roscoe Pound in his belief that a rejection of English common law, the departure of leading Loyalist attorneys, and an undeveloped reporting system in the post-Revolutionary period, together led to a noticeable break from the past. 16 Another group has concentrated on the colonial period in order to discover whether the significant ante­ cedents of American law derived from English local courts or from the central courts in London. 1 7 Both groups have been concerned with questions of substantive law and the development of legal principles rather than with the place of law in the lives of ordinary people. Legal research has ranged from bench to bar to legislative chambers. Scholars have collected, calendared, and edited the papers of promi­ nent predecessors. 18 Even the notebooks of obscure attorneys practic­ ing in a local court have been mined for clues. 19 Legislative debates have been examined to discover intention, statutes to determine im­ plementation, and judges' opinions to find legal perception. 20 Members 15

117. 16

William Kent, Memoirs and Letters of James Kent, LL.D. (Boston, 1898),

Roscoe Pound, The Formative Era of American Law (Boston, 1938); Francis R. Aumann, "Some Problems of Growth and Development in the Formative Period of the American Legal System, 1775-1866," University of Cincinnati Law Review, xm (1939), 382-445; Anton-Hermann Chroust, "The American Legal Profession: Its Agony and Ecstacy," Notre Dame Lawyer, XLVI (1971), 487-525. 17 A particularly useful collection of these studies is David H. Flaherty, ed., Essays in the History of Early American Law (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969). 18 Julius Goebel, Jr., et al., eds., The Law Practice of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1964-1969); L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel, eds., Legal Papers of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); Irwin S. Rhodes, The Papers of John Marshall: A Descriptive Calendar (Norman, OkIa., 1969); David John Mays, ed., The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, 1734-1803 (Charlottesville, Va., 1967); Herbert A. Johnson, et al., eds., The Papers of John Marshall (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1974). 19 Daniel J. Boorstin, ed., Delaware Cases 1792-1830 (St. Paul, Minn., 1943). 20 Morton J. Horwitz, "The Emergence of an Instrumental Conception of American Law, 1780-1820," in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds., Law in American History, Perspectives in American History, ν (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 287-326. 9

INTRODUCTION 21

of the bar in at least two states have been scrutinized. A variety of evidence has been gathered from widely scattered sources. As a result, the legal history of the young nation has been reconstructed from fragments of information and interpretation that are often unrelated to each other, and generalists have been forced to rely upon such dis­ parate bits and pieces in the absence of more comprehensive knowl­ edge. 22 There have been few systematic studies of the total caseloads of any courts and fewer still that have analyzed the disposition of all the cases. 23 Sampling techniques have dominated research. Yet the com­ prehensive study of any court's records yields both a quantity and a quality of evidence not found elsewhere. While debates and statutes suggest possibilities, and private papers indicate probabilities, only court records provide certainties. And the court itself provides a focus for otherwise disconnected facts. Court records, especially contemporaneous ones, also facilitate com­ parisons not otherwise feasible. It may prove to be impossible to de­ velop a body of knowledge based upon state court records because they seem often to have been lost or destroyed. But the most essential records of the lower federal courts, the Order Books (or Minute Books) have been preserved for many if not all of the jurisdictions. Their records reveal actual legal practice. They show how national laws, 21 Donald M. Roper, " T h e Elite of the New York Bar as Seen from the Bench; James Kent's Necrologies," New-York Historical Society Quarterly, LVI ( 1 9 7 2 ) , 199-237; Gerard W. Gawalt, "Massachusetts Lawyers: A Historical Analysis of the Process of Professionalization, 1760-1840" ( P h . D . diss., Clark University, 1969). 22 The first general history of American law is Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law ( N e w York, 1973). The author describes the limitations of existing knowledge throughout his book. See, e.g., 9, 83, 110, 144, 596-601. 23 Francis W. Laurent's study of the circuit court of Chippewa County, Wis­ consin, from 1855 to 1954, The Business of a Trial Court: 100 Years of Cases (Madison, 1959) received only one thoughtful review, by Lawrence M. Friedman in Sf. Louis Law Review, ν ( 1 9 5 9 ) , 454-466. One of the rare examples of pub­ lished court records for this period is William Wirt Blume, ed., Transactions of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Michigan 1805-1814 (Ann Arbor, 1935). Even colonial court records, which have received greater attention, are seldom published in their entirety. A convenient guide to these is Michael G. Kammen, "Colonial Court Records and the Study of Early American History: A Biblio­ graphic Review," American Historical Review, LXX ( 1 9 6 5 ) , 732-739. Analyses of post-Revolutionary legal history based upon court records are: William Wirt Blume, "Civil Procedure on the American Frontier: A Study of the Records of a Court of Common Pleas of the Northwest and Indiana Territories (17961805)," Michigan Law Review, LVI ( 1 9 5 7 ) , 161-224; M. Leigh Harrison, "A Study of the Earliest Reported Decisions of the South Carolina Courts of Law," Am. J. Legal Hist., xvi ( 1 9 7 2 ) , 51-70; Brown, "Frontier Justice," ibid., 126-153.

10

INTRODUCTION

constitutional interpretations, and federal authority were, in fact, applied to the citizens and the circumstances of the nation. It is important to remember that the federal judiciary encompasses much more than the United States Supreme Court. Certainly the appellate function of that court gives it a unique status. But the presumption that a court of last resort is the most (or only) important court in the legal system should be qualified, especially for the early national period. Most cases originate and terminate in the trial courts; it is there that most people have their only contact with the judicial system. The traditional emphasis upon the Supreme Court may have distorted our understanding of the importance of the federal judiciary. Systematic investigations into the work of the early inferior courts may show that their impact was much greater than has been assumed. In the beginning of the national experience, it was generally thought that state courts could handle most of the cases that would be docketed in the federal district and circuit courts. These lower courts were believed to be needed, not to share the burden of volume (which was expected to be slight), but to protect nonresidents from possible local prejudices, and to assure uniformity where a single national practice was considered necessary, as in admiralty and maritime law.24 Local variations in legal practice were expected and accepted as long as the right of appeal to the Supreme Court was preserved. The original district and circuit courts were considered useful more for political purposes than because they were needed for the administration of private or public law. From the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1789 to the present, no evidence has been presented to challenge these assumptions. But an examination of the records of the federal courts in Kentucky suggests that they may need reevaluation. The most striking discovery is the number of cases. During a period when the United States Supreme Court handed down 457 decisions, the federal courts in Kentucky acted on 2,290 causes. Constitutional and legal questions were decided much more frequently by these inferior courts than by the Supreme Court, and for 98 percent of the litigants, those decisions were final. Only forty-nine cases were carried to the Supreme Court, where they appear in the early Reports (although the case files are incomplete in the Supreme Court's records). 25 The remaining 2,241 cases have been 24 Charles Warren, "New Light on the History of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789," Harvard Law Review, XXXVII (1923), 49-132. 2 ^ Appellate Case Files of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1792-1831, M-214, Records of the Supreme Court of the United States, Record Group 267, National Archives.

11

INTRODUCTION

completely overlooked by the compilers of federal and state digests and do not appear in any published records. Only two Kentucky cases from this period have ever received any public attention at all, and even that has been limited to specialists.26 This hitherto hidden litigation provides a wealth of illuminating material. Its usefulness for legal history is obvious. Some of the information yields insights into social and economic history. Other data are important in political history. For example, one-third of the cases were brought by officers of the government. Most of this litigation came about because of the internal revenue laws and it illustrates the difficulties of enforcing unpopular statutes among a population determined to resist them. The remaining cases were private civil suits between individuals. The volume alone indicates that in Kentucky the federal courts were perceived as essential in the adjudication of private controversies. Thousands of people were directly affected by the proceedings in these courts. And because the influence of a lawsuit may extend beyond the nominal litigants, it is likely that thousands more were affected indirectly. It seems clear that the federal courts in Kentucky must have been much more important than has been assumed, and in a different way from that described by Charles Warren. It is doubtful whether any other branch of the federal government acted so directly upon so many people in Kentucky as did this segment of the federal judiciary. Probably only the government's policies on the Indians and on navigation of the Mississippi River were of greater significance to these citizens in the interior. During a period when the executive and legislative branches so often seemed "at a distance and out of sight," and the United States Supreme Court was available only to a tiny, privileged minority, the courts of Harry Innes were accessible, visible, and deeply involved in the concerns of the population. 27 Because contact with the federal courts was so extensive, these institutions may well have exercised considerable influence on the attitudes of Kentuckians toward their central government. It has, therefore, seemed important to evaluate the kind of law practiced in the 26 The better known is the charge of treason unsuccessfully brought against Aaron Burr, described in Chapter Six. Green v. Biddle was discovered in the Supreme Court Reports by Paul W. Gates, who described its progress there in "Tenants of the Log Cabin," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLIX (1962), 3-31. 27 The quotation from The Federalist, No. 27, by Alexander Hamilton, illustrates James Sterling Young's description of the alienation of citizens from their government in The Washington Community 1800-1828 (New York, 1966), 13-37.

12

INTBODUCTION

courts to determine what kind of image they projected to the people. Did these courts aspire to that equal justice which is consonant with political equality? Were the procedures of the courts new ones that were devised in response to the requirements of the frontier, or were they the familiar English procedures as they had been modified by the colonial experience? What kind of men were identified with the courts? Did they enhance the prestige of the judiciary, or did they dissipate its potential authority? What was the range of power available to the lower courts? This study attempts to answer these questions. Whether the experience of Kentucky was unique or was typical will not be known until similar studies are made of other federal and state courts of this period. The difficulties of transportation and communication may have superseded a common tradition, the perceptions and convictions of certain key individuals may have been uncommon, and the expense of carrying cases to the Supreme Court may have prevented challenges to the practices of the Kentucky courts and inhibited the development of a uniform federal practice. But what happened in the Kentucky federal courts from 1789 until 1816 is revealed in an unusually rich combination of records. They provide the evidence for this examination of the jurisdiction of those courts, the judges and other personnel who served in them, the procedures followed, and the disposition of cases according to categories. Taken together, these findings illustrate one segment of our judicial history—and raise questions about the remainder.

13

CHAPTER ONE

The Style, Structure, and Jurisdiction of the Courts ENTUCKY acquired a federal court in 1789, two and one-half years before it achieved statehood. What was then the western district of Virginia was a wilderness, only recently vacated by Indians who frequently recrossed the Ohio River to attack the Anglo-Americans who had taken their hunting and farming lands. 1 It was a forested and fertile land which promised great productivity and wealth to those who could hold and exploit it, but it was a land that could be reached only after hazardous journeys along primitive trails or along the rivers. No stagecoaches penetrated the region, and the unimproved Wilder­ ness Road, recently carved through the mountains, was too rugged for wagons. 2 There was no mail service: even letters from President Washington and his secretary of war were carried in the packs and saddlebags of private citizens. 3 Communications within and away from the area were exceedingly irregular. Yet despite the primitive environment, the federal court in Kentucky soon became very busy, in part because the law practiced there did not yield the crude justice generally associated with the frontier.4 This

K

1

Harry Innes to John Brown, Dec. 7, 1787, Harry Innes File, Manuscript Collection, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Ky.; William Elsey Connelley and E[IHs] M[erton] Coulter, History of Kentucky, ed. Charles Kerr, ι (Chicago, 1922), 239-307, passim. 2 Thomas Todd to Charles S. Todd, Aug. 23, 1808, Todd Family Papers, Manu­ script Dept., Filson Club, Louisville, Ky.; Thomas Speed, The Wilderness Road (Louisville, 1886), 30; Robert L. Kincaid, The Wilderness Road (Harrogate, Term., 1955), 184. 3 George Washington ( b y Tobias Lear) to John Brown, Oct. 2, 1789, Miscel­ laneous Letters of the Department of State, 1789-1906, M-179, roll 2, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives. (Here­ after cited as Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179); Henry Knox to Beverly Randolph, Dec. 17, 1789, W. P. Palmer et al., eds., Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts . . . Preserved . . . at Richmond (1652-1869), ν (Richmond, Va., 1875-1893), 82. 4 Writers who accept the thesis that English common law was rejected during this period often conclude that English procedures also were proscribed, and that frontier courts were crude and undignified. E.g., Charles Warren, A History of the American Bar (Boston, 1911), 212-214; Roscoe Pound, " T h e Pioneers and the Common Law," West Virginia Law Quarterly, xxvn (1920), 1; Richard E. Ellis, The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (New York, 1971), 115-117; Anton-Hermann Chroust, " T h e American Legal Profes­ sion: Its Agony and Ecstasy," Notre Dame Lawyer, XLVI (1971), 487-525; Charles

14

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

court and its immediate successors upheld the traditions of centuries of English experience, modified in the colonial period and now applied to a new political and judicial experiment. Some of that law was very old, developed in a different political and socioeconomic environment, but applicable in many of its forms and procedures to this sparsely settled and crudely surveyed land. Some of the law was an adaptation of familiar principles to the requirements of the new Constitution, which was founded on the unprecedented ideal of political and legal equality for all white men. Some of the law evolved in Kentucky in response to the competitiveness and land hunger of the population. Always it was law characterized by a time-consuming concern for due process and by an avoidance of arbitrary judgments and summary methods. There are several reasons for the sophisticated nature of the legal practice in these courts. First, it was part of the expectations of the settlers themselves, many of whom came from Virginia where they had known a well-trained bar and bench, conservatively dedicated to English legal traditions. 5 Second in importance is the fact that Harry Innes served as district judge for the courts' first twenty-seven years. Innes was a man of strong character, firm convictions, and excellent legal education who was well aware both of the precedents he had to follow and the importance of those he would establish. The third reason lies in the qualifications of the other officers of the courts. AU were remarkably well trained for their generation. Many were men whose families or whose own reputations were known personally to M. Haar, ed., The Golden Age of American Law (New York, 1965), 4. Most of the evidence for this conclusion comes from lawyers' memoirs. Such sources should be treated with skepticism, for they may be colored by self-interest, po­ litical and legal prejudices, and (especially in an age of circuit riding) the temptation to tell good stories whether or not they are true. While irregularities doubtless occurred, their prevalence has probably been exaggerated, as scholars who have studied court records assert. See Zechariah Chafee, Jr., "Colonial Courts and the Common Law," in David H. Flaherty, ed., Essays in the History of Early American Law (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), 69; William Wirt Blume, "Civil Procedure on the American Frontier: A Study of the Records of a Court of Common Pleas of the Northwest and Indiana Territories (1796-1805)," Michi­ gan Law Review, LVI ( 1 9 5 7 ) , 209; Julius Goebel, Jr., et al., The Law Practice of Alexander Hamilton, ι ( N e w York, 1964), 7-10, 33; Elizabeth Gaspar Brown, "Frontier Justice: Wayne County 1796-1836," American Journal of Legal History, xvi ( 1 9 7 2 ) , 126-128, 152. 5 David H. Flaherty, "An Introduction to Early American Legal History," in Flaherty, ed., Essays in the History of Early American Law, 25; Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, ι (Boston, 1926), 37; Ellis, Jefjersonian Crisis, 121; Herbert A. Johnson et al., The Papers of John Marshall, ι (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1974).

15

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

the presidents who appointed them. The clerks, who served at the pleasure of the judges, were lawyers who could meet their exacting standards. Finally, there was no lay bar in Kentucky's federal courts. Counsel were admitted only upon presentation of credentials indicating that they had been licensed to practice in the state courts or upon motion of attorneys already accepted by the court.0 Tradition and stability were, however, only part of the nature of these courts. An equally important characteristic was their experimental quality. In Kentucky, as throughout the nation, the judiciary was involved in a legal experiment that paralleled (as it proceeded from) the contemporaneous political experiment in federalism. The new Constitution had created a federal system that divided authority between the national government and the states. Although in certain areas it was supreme, the national government was one of limited powers. The states had rights and jurisdictions reserved to them which were not always clearly specified. Any concentration of power was generally feared, yet the central government had to be strong enough that it might hope to achieve the purposes expressed in the Preamble to the Constitution. The principal function of the federal judiciary was to resolve conflicts: those between the states, between citizens of different states, and between the states and their citizens and the national government. These conflicts had to be resolved without infringing the recently won and jealously guarded liberties of the people, and they had to be resolved in states that were competing not only with each other but also with the federal government. To the degree that the powers, rights, and liberties claimed in these conflicts were defined in legal as well as in political terms, it was the responsibility of the judiciary to guide the experiment in federalism by declaring what the law was. For federal judges, especially, the assignment was a challenging and ironic one. They had been reared in a legal system that had provided a measure of justice to a remarkably high proportion of the population through its emphasis upon custom and precedent. They belonged to a generation that had violently resisted what had been construed as arbitrary departures from these. They had defied legal authority themselves and were now engaged in justifying a government based upon revolution. Yet they had to draw upon their knowledge of English law and history to find the legal mechanisms needed to stabilize and rationalize an American government. It was the particular obligation of 6

United States Court for the District of Kentucky, "Rules of the Court," Order Book A, Apr. 1, 1790, ix. (Hereafter cited as DC OB).

16

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

federal judges to discover traditional principles that would provide sufficient continuity with the past to give the new legal system the pre­ dictability and prestige needed for its survival. Specifically, this meant that every federal judge needed to be fa­ miliar with English common law, English statutes, and English chan­ cery procedures and decisions. All of these then had to be interpreted in the spirit of the new American Constitution, in conformity with the statutes passed by Congress, and with a responsible awareness of po­ litical realities. In addition, the Judiciary Act of 1789 required federal judges to be expert interpreters of the individual constitutions and laws of the states in which their federal courts were situated. Section 34 stated: "The laws of the several States, except where the Constitu­ tion, treaties, or statutes of the United States shall otherwise require or provide, shall be regarded as rules of decision in trials at common law in the courts of the United States in cases where they apply." 7 But following the laws of the states was difficult because the states themselves were nascent political bodies. Their laws were not uniform. They were unclear, uncodified, and unsystematically recorded if re­ corded at all. Even where there were no conflicts between state prac­ tices and national principles, it was hard for federal judges to deter­ mine whether their decisions would be consistent with those of other federal courts because a nationwide reporting system had not yet been developed. And so declaring the law in the new federal judiciary was a compli­ cated and subjective process. The Kentucky court records illustrate that the concept of a clear and simple "rule of law" upon which all could agree was a myth believed only by laymen. Conflicting tradi­ tions, decisions, and statutes had to be weighed. Discovering "the law" for a particular case was often a delicate matter requiring a high de­ gree of selectivity and interpretation. Sometimes it was difficult to fathom the intentions of the Congress; occasionally it seemed inex­ pedient to press those intentions too vigorously. Often the administra­ tion of the housekeeping details of the court was a formidable task, and always it was troublesome to obtain law books and court reports. The distances and the procedures prevented any rapid termination of most causes. The day in and day out work of the court was a tedious process of moving cases slowly and cautiously toward judgment. During their first generation, the Kentucky federal courts developed an identifiable style that was manifested in their proceedings and in 7

Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America, 1789-1873 (Boston, 1850-1873), i, 73. (Hereafter cited as ι Stat.) 17

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

the disposition of the caseload. Some of the determinants of this style were unique to Kentucky, such as the location of the court and the judges' points of view. Others were shared by certain other courts, like the response of the people to controversial congressional statutes and the applicability of particular land laws. Still other determinants were common to all federal courts, including the constitutional and statutory provisions that empowered and at the same time limited the judiciary. In order to evaluate the work of the Kentucky federal courts it may be useful to examine these provisions first, because they provided the boundaries within which the courts could operate. All federal courts were established under two constitutional provisions, one in section 1 of Article in, the other in section 8 of Article i. These provisions stated: The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Congress shall have Power . . . [t]o constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court. Only the Supreme Court itself was required by the Constitution, and only the Supreme Court had an original jurisdiction specified in the Constitution. Other federal courts were created at the discretion of Congress, and Congress could distribute the federal jurisdiction of these courts. The range of judicial power was potentially great, as may be seen in the following clauses from section 2 of Article ni: The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; . . . to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; . . . between Citizens of different States,—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. During the early years of the republic, Congress frequently exercised its authority over the structure and jurisdiction of the judicial branch. It experimented with the size of the Supreme Court, the numbers of circuit and district courts, the procedures and processes to be followed in those courts, and the extent of their jurisdiction. In fact, eighty-six statutes relating to the judiciary were passed during the time covered 18

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

by this study. Many of these laws were not applicable to the Kentucky courts, and others were not of lasting significance. But the Judiciary Acts of 1789, 1801, 1802, and 1807, which dealt with structure and jurisdiction, immediately affected the Kentucky federal courts in important ways. The United States Court for the District of Kentucky was established by the Judiciary Act of 1789. In that first judiciary act, Congress devised a three-part federal court system, made up of district courts, circuit courts, and the United States Supreme Court. Although the names of these courts have been retained, their functions have changed over time. In this respect, the Supreme Court has changed less than the original lower courts, which were quite different from their modern counterparts because of the different division of federal jurisdiction. In the modern federal system, the district courts are the courts of general original jurisdiction. They hear by far the greatest proportion of federal cases. Only a minority of those are appealed to what are now called the circuit courts of appeal, and a still smaller number of those cases are carried to the United States Supreme Court. Together, the federal courts today resemble a three-tiered layer cake, with the lowest layer, the district courts, having the largest caseload. In the original system, however, it was the circuit courts that were the courts of general original jurisdiction and had the largest number of cases. The division of the federal caseload between the circuit courts and the district courts was then like a pie, with the district courts having a very small slice and the circuit courts having the larger share. Although there were minor changes, this proportional distribution remained constant throughout the early years of the republic. Initially there were three circuit courts and thirteen district courts: one district court for each of the eleven states that had already ratified the Constitution, and one for each of the remote Districts of Maine and Kentucky.8 The districts of the seaboard states were fitted into a system of circuit courts who heard their appeals. Circuit courts were held by the judge of the district and by Supreme Court justices assigned to the circuit. The distinctions between the inferior courts can be seen in sections 9 and 11 of the Judiciary Act of 1789: [T] he district courts shall have, exclusively of the courts of the several States, cognizance of all crimes and offenses that shall be cognizable under the authority of the United States, committed 8

Ibid., sees. 1-3. Maine was then a part of Massachusetts, as Kentucky was a part of Virginia. Congress created an additional district court for each of the other states as they entered the union.

19

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

within their respective districts, or upon the high seas; where no other punishment than whipping, not exceeding thirty stripes, a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars, or a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months, is to be inflicted; and shall also have exclusive original cognizance of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction . . . and shall also have exclusive original cognizance of all seizures on land, or other waters than as aforesaid, made, and of all suits for penalties and forfeitures incurred, under the laws of the United States. And shall also have cognizance, concurrent as last mentioned, of all suits at common law where the United States sue, and the matter in dispute amounts, exclusive of costs, to the sum or value of one hundred dollars. . . . And . . . of all suits against consuls or viceconsuls. Circuit court jurisdiction included: [OJriginal cognizance, concurrent with the courts of the several States, of all suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity, where the matter in dispute exceeds, exclusive of costs, the sum or value of five hundred dollars, and the United States are plaintiffs, or petitioners; or an alien is a party, or the suit is between a citizen of the State where the suit is brought, and a citizen of another State.9 If the Kentucky District Court had been like other district courts, it would have had very little to do.10 There were then few petty crimes defined as federal crimes and no admiralty or maritime cases on the inland waters. Rarely did consuls or vice-consuls go to Kentucky, and never did aliens sue there for wrongs or injuries committed against them. (There were, however, federal suits at common law brought in connection with the internal revenue acts.) But the early federal court in Kentucky was unlike other inferior federal courts because it had both district court and circuit court jurisdiction until 1807. Congress did change the name of the court twice before then, which lent a superficial confusion to its records. The district court established in 1789 was supplanted by the Sixth Circuit Court in 1801, which was in turn replaced by the district court again in 1802. Yet whatever it was called, there was only one court for the first eighteen years, and it had this unusual combined caseload. (It 9

Ibid., sec. 9; sec. 11. Dwight F. Henderson, Courts for a New Nation (Washington, D.C., 1971), 55-63, 105-114. 10

20

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

could not, however, under its circuit court jurisdiction hear appeals or writs of error from its district court because such cases went directly 1X to the United States Supreme Court.) Finally, in 1807, Congress di­ vided the jurisdictions and created two courts. The district court kept the cases that came under district court jurisdiction, and the cases that came under circuit jurisdiction went to a new United States Court for the Seventh Circuit in the District of Kentucky. After that, the two courts met separately and kept separate records, just like the federal courts in other states. Even with its combined jurisdictions, the federal court in Kentucky did not appear to be much of an asset to the national government during its first decade. Its private caseload was small: not until March 1799 were more than twenty new suits docketed in a single term. 1 2 Its government caseload was disappointing, especially to Treasury of­ ficials.13 They were intent upon enforcing the internal revenue acts of the period, but most Kentuckians were determined to avoid them, and the federal judge in Kentucky clearly sympathized with the citizens. Government officers could only watch helplessly from afar. Although there was a flurry of activity in the court in 1779 and 1800, the results were uncertain as the Federalist era approached its end. The revenue cases got bogged down in technicalities, and almost half the private cases (149 of a total of 338 docketed) were still pending. 14 After the Republicans won the election of 1800, the Federalists decided that the time had come to preserve the judiciary from those whom they viewed as irresponsible, and to stamp a Federalist imprint on the court in Kentucky. Although some aspects of the Judiciary Acts of 1801 embodied re­ forms that had long been under discussion, other aspects were clearly political. 15 Whatever may have been intended by the Federalists, the impact of their program on Kentucky was clearly partisan. Congress 11

1 Stat. 73, sec. 10. As other federal courts were established on the frontier, they, too, were given this combined caseload and direct appeal to the Supreme Court. (Under sec. 4, district judges in the coastal circuit courts were denied a vote in cases of appeal or error arising from their own decision.) 12 Appendix A shows the private cases docketed by terms of the court. 13 Appendix C shows the government's civil and criminal cases by terms of the court. 14 Appendix B shows the judgments of the court in private cases by terms of the court. 15 There were two important statutes: one passed Feb. 13, 1801 (n Stat. 89), and one passed Mar. 3, 1801 (π Stat. 121). The reform aspects of the former are described in Kathryn Turner, "Federalist Policy and the Judiciary Act of 1801," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., χχπ (1965), 3-32. 21

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

abolished the district court with its single judge and replaced it with a circuit court having three judges, two of whom knew Kttle about Kentucky laws. If it was hoped that augmenting the bench would di­ minish the pending caseload, the experience in Kentucky proved other­ wise. On the contrary, the number of judgments decreased during the effective period of the statute and increased after its repeal. The political ramifications of the Federalist plan are more obvious when one compares the new Kentucky circuit court with the five others elsewhere in the nation. Each of them was assigned three circuit judges. But the Sixth Circuit, made up of the districts of Kentucky. East Tennessee, West Tennessee, and Ohio, was to have one circuit judge and two district judges. 16 These two were men who had served in recently eliminated district courts in Kentucky and Tennessee. 17 Both were experienced federal judges, but neither was promoted to circuit judge. (Section 7 of the act even specified that "[wjhenever the office of District Judge in Kentucky or Tennessee becomes vacant, circuit judges are to be appointed.") It was doubtless no coincidence that the judges in those states were Jeffersonians. It was also no coin­ cidence that a Federalist named William McClung, who had no ju­ dicial background, was named circuit judge and made senior to his more experienced colleagues. Whatever deficiencies he may have had as a lawyer or jurist were apparently outweighed by the fact that he was a brother-in-law of Secretary of State and Chief Justice John Marshall. Furthermore, although the Kentucky federal court had docketed the fourth highest number of cases in the nation, the three judges in the Sixth Circuit were to be paid an annual salary of only $1,500.18 This 16

π Stat. 89, sec. 7. Ohio was not yet a state. The district of Ohio, described in sec. 4, included "the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio, and the Indiana territory," which meant the entire Northwest Territory. The court met at Cincinnati in December 1801, but Innes did not attend because of illness. He wrote that "the circuit is too large for three Judges—2 Circuits in the year amounts to 1640 miles, thro' bad roads—bad lodgings and intolerable living— the fair thro' the Ky. wilderness is the best part of it. There ought to be another Judge and his residence on the north side of the Ohio." Harry Innes to John Breckinridge, Dec. 27, 1801, Breckinridge Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, xxi, 3559. 17 It should be noted that by shifting these district judges to the circuit court, the Federalists avoided a constitutional problem encountered by the Jeffersonians in 1802, when abolition of the circuit judgeships terminated the appointments of federal judges who, under Art. in, can expect permanent tenure. is Walter Lowrie and Walter S. Franklin, eds., American State Papers, Miscellaneous: Documents, Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, ι (Washington, 1834), 302, 320, 325; n Stat. 89, sec. 41.

22

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

was $500 more than had been paid to the former district judges of Ken­ tucky and Tennessee, but it was $100 to $300 less than was allotted to seven of the new district judges, and $500 less than the salaries of the 1 1 judges serving the other circuits. '· The salary provisions seemed de­ 2 signed to add insult to injury. " The Federalists also tried to change the site of the court in Kentucky. Originally it had met at Harrodsburg, which was then the center of political activity in the district. Two years after Kentucky became a state and established its capital at Frankfort, the federal court moved to that city. But the new circuit court was to meet at "Bairdstown" (Bardstown), which in 1801 was chiefly notable as the center of op­ position to the Jeffersonian political establishment in Kentucky. Bards­ town also happened to be the largest town near the home of the new circuit judge. 21 Apparently, however, the convenience of the circuit judge was soon overridden by the convenience of the lawyers and liti­ gants who would appear before the court. The law was changed a month later, and the Sixth Circuit Court, like its predecessor, held its terms in Frankfort. 22 To many Kentuckians, these Federalist judiciary acts were further evidence of what they perceived to be inattention and even disregard by the distant federal government of the problems of the people be­ yond the mountains. 23 During Washington's administration they had bitterly resented the whiskey tax, Jay's Treaty with England, the delay in securing navigation of the Mississippi and a grant of deposit at the river's mouth from the Spanish, and several mismanaged and poorly supported expeditions against the Indians that preceded the Battle of Fallen Timbers. (That victory was made possible, in Kentuckians' eyes, 19

ι Stat. 72; π Stat. 121, sec. 1. And so they appeared to Judge Innes, who complained to Senator John Breck­ inridge. Innes to Breckinridge, Dec. 27, 1801, Breckinridge Family Papers, xxi, 3559. 21 π Stat. 89, sec. 7; Connelley and Coulter, History of Kentucky, i, 488; W[illiam] M[cClung] Paxton, The Marshall Family (Cincinnati, 1885), 72. 22 π Stat. 121, sec. 6; United States Court for the Sixth Circuit, in DC OB C, May 15, 1801, 50; Nov. 16, 1801, 66; May 15, 1802, 188. 23 James Sterling Young has described the attitude of the citizenry toward the federal government as generally one of indifference in his The Washington Com­ munity 1800-1828 (New York, 1966), 27-36 and passim. During the earlier, Federalist era, a significant body of opinion in Kentucky was decidedly resentful toward the central administration and manifested itself in widespread opposition to legislative and executive actions of that period. This hostility abated with Jefferson's accession to the presidency. The indifference suggested by Young might be thought of as a relatively positive attitude, in that it implied a tolerant acceptance of the government that had formerly been lacking. 20

23

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION 24

only by the wise employment of Kentucky men and horses.) But Washington was at least a Virginian; Adams with his New England heritage and conscious Federalism had no such redeeming feature. He continued an "outsider" as United States attorney who then harassed the distillers; he supported a stamp act in order to fund an unwanted and undeclared war against France, despite the negative association of the tax with British policies in the pre-Revolutionary period; he signed a sedition act aimed at the supporters of Jefferson; and, finally, he appointed two federal judges who were unsophisticated about the peculiarly complicated land laws of Kentucky and might change the established pattern of decisions. Many Kentuckians expressed their resentment of the Adams ad­ ministration in a variety of ways. They evaded the whiskey tax and blocked the efforts of the United States attorney so effectively that he was finally relieved of his appointment. They acquitted the two per­ sons who were charged by his successor with violating the stamp act. 25 They answered the sedition act with the Kentucky Resolutions. 20 And when the Republican-dominated Seventh Congress convened in De­ cember 1801, many urged Senator John Breckinridge to lead the repeal of the Federalists' judiciary acts and congratulated him after he had done so. 27 24 These matters and others mentioned in the following paragraph are described in greater detail in succeeding chapters in connection with their impact upon the work of the court and its personnel.

25 U.S. Robinson,

v. Hart, D C O B C, N o v . 18, 1 8 0 1 , 1 1 7 ; M a y 17, 1 8 0 2 , 194; U.S. v. ibid., N o v . 18, 1 8 0 1 , 1 1 6 ; M a y 17, 1 8 0 2 , 1 9 2 ; N o v . 2 4 , 1 8 0 2 , 3 8 5 ;

ι Stat. 536. 2 6 I Stat. 596; Kentucky Gazette (Lexington), Nov. 14, 1798; Nov. 28, 1799. 27 Breckinridge Family Papers, xx, 3515; xxi, 3559, 3563, 3581, 3585, 3587, 3641, 3647, 3651, 3655, 3Θ74, 3676, 3688. The misinterpretation of this cor­ respondence by Charles Warren was a major factor in his misunderstanding the stature of the federal courts in Kentucky. He thought that these letters showed "that the Kentuckians were adverse to all Federal Courts" and that the "cor­ respondence presents such affirmative proof of the reasons for hostility to the Federal Courts." He concluded, "that these fears had some justification was seen, twenty years later, when the Supreme Court of the United States in Green v. Biddle overturned the most important land-claimant laws of Kentucky on the ground of unconstitutionality." Charles Warren, Supreme Court, i, 220-222. Al­ though some writers complained about the federal court because it was finally effectively enforcing the ten-year-old internal revenue laws and others worried about the expense of appeals to the United States Supreme Court, most criticized the Sixth Circuit Court with its "foreign" judges, and supported instead the single-judge court of Harry Innes, who was familiar with Kentucky and Virginia land laws. A striking example of Warren's misconstruction is seen in a letter from Thomas Todd: the "one Judge" whom Todd preferred to "the additional Judges" was Innes; the others were McClung and McNairy, appointed under the terms of the Judiciary Act of 1801. Warren's misunderstanding apparently stemmed

24

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

The Jeffersonian Congress reestablished the district court with Harry 28 Innes as its single judge. The circuit judges' positions were eliminated and the Federalist incumbent thereby deprived of his post. A Republi­ can replaced a Federalist as marshal. But Federalist Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, a midnight appointment as United States attorney, was re­ tained. So was James Morrison, the internal revenue supervisor who had earlier been appointed by Adams. Together they secured the first effective enforcement of the decade-old internal revenue laws—after Jefferson became president and repeal was promised. Their retention suggests that in Kentucky, Jefferson's patronage policy may not have been as "thoroughly partisan" during his first term as has recently been suggested. 29 On the contrary, the president appears to have been satis­ fied with Daveiss and fired the attorney in 1807 only after he had re­ peatedly criticized Jefferson in public for his earlier handling of the Burr affair. Morrison, as supervisor, glad to see the internal revenue laws repealed, conscientiously wound up his work and retained his office until it was finally abolished in 1808 by a general administrative reorganization. 30 partly from his reliance upon the condemnation of Innes found in the History of Kentucky written by Innes's lifelong political enemy Humphrey Marshall, and partly from his belief that the attacks upon the federal courts following the Green v. Biddle decision marked the culmination of a generation's continuous resentment of federal judicial authority. However, that decision was denounced because it overturned earlier precedents established by Innes upholding the oc­ cupying claimants' statutes. Similarly, the other circumstances pitting what Warren called "Kentucky Against the Court" in 1821-1825 represented major divergences from earlier practices. Warren listed these as the "usurpation" of admiralty juris­ diction over Kentucky's inland waters, the federal courts' protection of the Bank of the United States from state taxation after McCulloch v. Maryland, and an alleged disregard by the Kentucky federal courts of state statutes protecting judg­ ment debtors ( p p . 633-651). The court records show that it is anachronistic to apply these criticisms to the courts during Innes's lifetime. There were no ad­ miralty cases docketed during these years, and no suits involving the Bank of the United States (except criminal charges brought against suspected thieves and counterfeiters). From 1789 to 1816, the court rigorously upheld Kentucky statutes of all kinds, according to the requirement of sec. 34 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, including laws applying to judgment debtors. The misunderstanding about the Kentucky federal court, perhaps inevitable in a pioneer work of such broad scope, gained greater significance because it was combined with similar conclusions about an alleged hostility toward the United States Supreme Court by the people of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Virginia, and led to the assumption that the federal judiciary was generally feared or despised in the early republic. 28 π Stat. 132. 29 Carl E. Prince, " T h e Passing of the Aristocracy: Jefferson's Removal of the Federalists, 1801-1805," Journal of American History, LVII ( 1 9 7 0 ) , 565. 30 H Stat. 148; James Morrison to John Breckinridge, Feb. 27, 1802, Breckin­ ridge Family Papers, xxi, 3688; Albert Gallatin to President Jefferson, Sept. 3,

25

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

The caseload of the court did change after 1802. With the repeal of the whiskey tax, there were few new cases against distillers, but there were an astonishing number of government suits against former reve­ 31 nue collectors, who seem to have been almost universally delinquent. In addition, the number of private suits continued to grow steadily, a circumstance that may have been unique to the Kentucky federal court. It experienced none of that "decline of business . . . during Jefferson's administrations" ascribed to the federal courts. 32 As a matter of fact, the caseload grew more rapidly from 1801 to 1807 than it had before or would for some time afterwards, because Innes even ac­ cepted cases below the jurisdictional minima of the period. 33 This singular interpretation of jurisdiction ended in 1807, when the structure of the federal court in Kentucky was brought in line with those of other states. The Jeffersonians' judiciary acts were perhaps as political as the Federalists', but were much more popular in the West. Just as the Judiciary Acts of 1801 climaxed years of inattention and apparent discrimination against people beyond the mountains, so the Judiciary Act of 1807 climaxed Republican efforts to placate the in­ terior and bind it more firmly to the Union. Jefferson's administration had first repealed the Federalist judiciary acts and the internal revenue taxes, and then purchased Louisiana, securing forever the Mississippi River and New Orleans. The president sympathized with the land hunger of frontiersmen and encouraged territorial organization and cessions from the Indians. 3 4 And when it came to the judiciary, he pro1808, Internal Revenue Direct Tax, Correspondence 1807-1829, file 11713, Gen­ eral Records of the Department of the Treasury, Record Group 56, National Archives; Gallatin to Morrison, Oct. 20, 1808, ibid. 31 Carl E. Prince considered that Jefferson's failure to define misconduct or delinquency in his records was evidence that the many dismissals during his administration were made for political reasons. The records of the Treasury Department as well as of the Kentucky federal court provide abundant evidence of misconduct and delinquency. This is discussed in Chapter Five; cf. Prince, "Passing of the Aristocracy," 570. 32 Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 233. 33 These were debt cases brought by British merchants. They are described in Chapter Seven. The jurisdictional amount required for such cases by the Judiciary Act of 1789 was $500. This was lowered to $400 in 1801, and then restored to $500 in the Repeal Act of 1802. ι Stat. 73, sec. 11; π Stat. 89, sec. 11; π Stat. 132, sec. 3. 34 Jefferson's policy was to support settlement that would "gradually circum­ scribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the US. or remove beyond the Missisipi," a plan congenial to those on the frontier. Thomas Jefferson to Governor [William Henry] Harrison, Feb. 27, 1803, Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, VIi, The Territory of Indiana 1800-1810 (Washington, D.C., 1939), 9 1 .

26

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

posed an additional seat on the Supreme Court to be filled by a resi­ 35 dent of one of the newly admitted states of the West. After consulting with their congressional delegations, Jefferson chose Thomas Todd of Kentucky as the new justice. Todd was respected and popular in Kentucky, and because he had been associated with the state Court of Appeals for fifteen years he was an expert on the land laws that would be interpreted in the federal court. 36 Furthermore, Todd was a younger cousin of Judge Innes and had been his student and protege. Sitting together on the circuit bench, they could be ex­ pected to retain the line of decision that Innes had established over the preceding eighteen years and thereby to reinforce the stability and prestige of the federal court. The Jeffersonians retained the interdependence of the Supreme Court and the circuit courts, even beyond the mountains. But the new Seventh Circuit was far from Washington and the difficulty of traveling through his circuit and to the nation's capital would prove to be an almost unbearable burden to Justice Todd. 3 7 Although an 1802 statute had provided that district judges could hold circuit courts in the ab­ sence of the Supreme Court justice assigned to the circuit, Todd tried to make the rounds from Kentucky to Tennessee to Ohio twice a year, as well as the arduous journey to the East. 3 8 Evidently Judge Innes be­ lieved that the Seventh Circuit Court was only truly constituted when Justice Todd was present, because in his absence the Order Books sometimes recorded "Pleas before Judge Innes" rather than "At the Circuit Court for the District of Kentucky." Innes announced judg­ ments at terms when Justice Todd was not present, but only on cases that had been under consideration for some time, which suggests that the judges had reached their decision together. The docket of the new circuit court demonstrated how great a pro­ portion of the caseload of the district court had been carried under its circuit court jurisdiction. Most cases were transferred to the Seventh 35 A later statute, passed in 1812, required that all district and territorial judges must be residents of the state or territory to whose federal courts they were appointed, π Stat. 788. 36 Todd was said to have been either the first or second choice of all the mem­ bers of Congress from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. Warren, Supreme Court, i, 301. Surprisingly, there are no letters about Todd in Letters of Application and Recommendation During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, 1801-1809, M-418, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives. « π Stat. 420; Thomas Todd to Charles S. Todd, Aug. 23, 1808, Mar. 1, 1810, and Feb. 17, 1811, Todd Family Papers, M S Dept., Filson Club. 38 π Stat. 156.

27

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

Circuit, and the work of the district court abruptly diminished. Only a handful of suits in which the government was plaintiff remained there, a reflection of the continuing but often futile effort of the United States to collect its money from delinquent postmasters, army contractors, and revenue officers. The business of the district court fell off so sharply that no new cases were docketed in 1809, 1811, or 1812. Only one pending suit was heard in 1811 and 1812, and no terms were held at all in 1813. Not until after the passage of a new series of revenue laws (to pay for the War of 1812) did the district court revive, in 1815. By the end of the period under examination, these measures once again gave the district court an active docket.39 The addition of a second judge to its bench did not substantially change the character of the Kentucky federal court. Procedures remained the same, and cases still moved slowly toward termination. The number of judgments did not increase materially. Where Judge Innes had averaged 32.4 judgments on private cases per term from November 1802 (when the district court was reestablished after the dissolution of the Sixth Circuit Court) through 1806, Judges Innes and Todd together averaged 32.8 judgments per term from May 1807 through the November 1815 term. The number of cases technically still pending remained high. By 1816, 520 private cases and 95 government suits remained open. Many had been inactive for years and were probably terminated, although this is not indicated in the Order Books. The most obvious difference between the Seventh Circuit Court and its predecessor was in the number of cases dismissed for want of jurisdiction. This disposition was rarely made earlier, but in the seven terms immediately following the creation of the new circuit court, ninety causes were dismissed for that reason. (There had been only five cases dismissed before 1801, and forty-nine from 1801 through 1806. The reasons for these dismissals were usually not given in the Order Books.) Apparently Justice Todd did not share Judge Innes's expansive interpretation of federal jurisdiction, especially where jurisdictional minima were concerned. It was probably this stricter interpretation that was responsible for the decline in the number of new cases docketed. In the nineteen terms from 1807 to 1816, the circuit court aver39 The lower third of the last 50 pages of District Court Order Book G, containing entries for the 1809-1815 terms, have been badly damaged by fire or water, and are among the very few sections of this substantial collection of records that are illegible. The upper portions of these pages are clear, however, and indicate the work of the court. So few judgments were rendered during these terms that this circumstance does not seriously distort the statistical analyses.

28

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

aged 31.5 new causes, a measurable difference from the average of 40 per term for the preceding thirteen district court terms. But the judges' interpretations of federal jurisdiction did not insure the caseload of their court. The Constitution and federal statutes made jurisdiction possible but not inevitable. Virtually all of the jurisdiction exercised by the district and circuit courts in Kentucky was a concurrent jurisdiction that could also be exercised by the state courts. Plaintiffs could choose between these courts, and it might have been expected that they would prefer their state courts. Kentucky judges were appointed by governors who were immediately responsible to the electorate, and state court procedures could be changed by the legislature. But federal judges were appointed by a president who might have a limited local constituency, and the duties of federal courts were prescribed by a distant Congress. The people of any given region or state might withhold their cooperation from the federal judiciary, but they could not control it, because they were a small minority of the whole. And where, as in Kentucky, federal courts were preferred over state courts, it must have been because the former had a reputation that was in some way superior to the latter: the opportunity for redress was the same in both. Modern federal courts derive much of their prestige from their identification with the United States Supreme Court and from the importance of a powerful national government. But during the period under discussion, both the Supreme Court and the national government were seen in a very different light. Before 1801, the high court was relatively unimportant, and after that date it was led by Chief Justice John Marshall, a man whose politics and principles were shared by few Kentuckians. The central government was much less powerful in its early years than it later became. Moreover, it was often a source of frustration and anxiety to its citizens in the interior. The national government as the embodiment of the union of all the states did not then have the stature it subsequently gained; in fact, the whole concept of the nation developed very gradually. The indexes to the Order Books of the Kentucky federal courts provide an illuminating example of this distinctively different attitude: when the United States was plaintiff, the cases are not indexed under "U" for the United States, but under "S" with the designation "States, United."40 40

This attitude was not unique to Kentucky. In the sections of the Judiciary Act of 1789 quoted above, "the United States" is treated as a plural subject requiring a plural verb.

29

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND JURISDICTION

The reasons why 2,290 causes were docketed in the federal courts in Kentucky between 1789 and 1816 are not, therefore, entirely explained by the national character of the courts or by the constitutional and statutory provisions that have been described. When Kentuckians so often chose their federal over their state courts, it must have been because the federal courts had something to offer that the state courts did not. The reputation of a federal court was shaped by its officers, and especially its judges, who set its style and guided the disposition of its cases. These men created a sophisticated judiciary despite the frontier environment of early Kentucky, and maintained the predictability of the law in a world that was otherwise so often uncertain. Understanding who they were, and how they fulfilled their responsibilities, are essential components of understanding the history of the federal courts in Kentucky.

30

CHAPTER

TWO

Judge Harry Innes MERICANS take great pride and comfort in the belief that theirs is . a government of laws and not of men. This shibboleth is generally understood to mean that the laws are superior to all men regardless of their station. It also carries an implication that laws, once enacted or discovered, go into effect automatically. But the records of the early federal courts in Kentucky indicate that there, at least, men decided which laws would be enforced, how they would be interpreted, and to whom they would be applied. While Kentucky was, for the most part, a law-respecting community, the laws did not operate there in a mechanical way. The human element was crucial. A review of the per­ sonnel of these courts may illustrate how important a determinant it was. The most important individual in the Kentucky federal courts from 1789 until 1816 was Harry Innes, judge of the United States Court for the District of Kentucky throughout these years. Innes was born in 1752 in Caroline County, Virginia to the former Catherine Richards, a woman of English ancestry, and Robert Innes, a clergyman who had emigrated from Scotland. The family was comfortably well off, al­ though not wealthy, and Innes was educated at Donald Robertson's school and at William and Mary College. He read law under George Wythe and numbered among his friends the sons of many prominent Virginia families. Innes was admitted to the bar in 1773 and practiced law in Bedford County, in western Virginia. Three years later he began his public career administering lead and powder mines for the Virginia Commit­ tee of Public Safety in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. 1 In 1779 Governor Thomas Jefferson appointed Innes to adjust and settle 2 land claims in the western Montgomery and Washington districts. In 1780 he became escheator and later commissioner of the specific tax (a direct tax imposed by the state). Governor Benjamin Harrison pro­ moted him in 1782 to the post of district commissioner of the specific tax for six western counties: Charlotte, Halifax, Pitsylvania, Henry,

A

ι Statement of Otto A. Rothert, Feb. 27, 1925, Otto A. Rothert, Collector, Papers Relating to Harry Innes, Manuscript Dept., Filson Club, Louisville, Ky. (Hereafter cited as Rothert-Innes Papers, Filson Club.) 2 Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton, N.J., 1950), xv, 583.

31

JXJDGE HARRY INNES 3

Bedford, and Campbell. Later in that year he was appointed assistant judge of the newly established Supreme Court of Judicature for the 4 5 Kentucky District of Virginia. Innes moved to Kentucky in 1783. Despite its impressive name, the new court met in a log cabin at Crow's Station, a tiny settlement between Harrodsburg and what soon 6 became Danville. The court had full civil and criminal jurisdiction, but it was chiefly occupied trying to settle land claims, which were al­ ready in a state of incredible confusion. It was staffed by a chief judge, two assistant judges, a clerk, and an attorney. When the first attorney was killed by Indians in 1784, Innes resigned his judgeship to take up the vacant post, preferring the fees of that office to those available to the judges. 7 The duties of the court did not fill his days, and once in Kentucky, Innes did as other Kentuckians did: he speculated in land. He also farmed, practiced law, and reared six daughters (four by his first mar­ riage; another and a stepdaughter by his second). He became a trustee of Transylvania University and the most honored charter member of the Political Club of Danville. 8 He was soon recognized as a leading member of his new community: a strong-minded, competent, and re­ sponsible person. He borrowed money, bought land and slaves, paid his bills, and prospered. 9 He ordered trunk loads of books from Eng­ land and built a distinguished library. 10 He got involved in a variety of mercantile and commercial ventures and often acted as agent for his 3

Harry Innes Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, xvi, Pt. i, 18, 19; Harry Innes to Col. Davies, July 21, 1782, ibid., Pt. ii, 234. (Hereafter cited as Innes Papers, Library of Congress.) 4 The certificate of appointment is in the Rothert-Innes Papers, Filson Club. 5 Innes to Henry Knox, July 7, 1790, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xix, 40. " T h o m a s Speed, The Political Club, Danville, Kentucky 1786-1790 (Louis­ ville, Ky., 1894), 20. 7 Robert S. Cotterill, History of Pioneer Kentucky (Cincinnati, 1917), 241; Pa­ tricia Watlington, The Partisan Spirit: Kentucky Politics, 1779-1792 ( N e w York, 1972), 54-58; John Marshall to George Muter, Jan. 7, 1785, Herbert A. Johnson, et al., eds., The Papers of John Marshall, ι (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1974), 134. 8 The Political Club, Danville, Kentucky, Records, 1786-1790, Ms Dept., Filson Club, Louisville, Ky. 9 Innes Papers, Library of Congress, passim but especially xvi; Harry Innes Papers, 1750-1810, M S Dept., Filson Club, Louisville, Ky. (Hereafter cited as Innes Papers, Filson Club.) 10 A book order of 1785 which included works of fiction and the classics, as well as law books, is given in Appendix D. The importance of studying the hold­ ings in private libraries to evaluate the intellectual sophistication of frontier law­ yers is shown in Michael H. Harris, " T h e Frontier Lawyer's Library; Southern Indiana, 1800-1850, as a Test Case," American Journal of Legal History, xvi (1972),239-251.

32

JUDGE HARRY INNES 11

friends when they traveled and as executor when they died. He made a lifelong enemy of Humphrey Marshall and a permanent friend of John Brown. He also found time to teach law to Thomas Todd, a younger first cousin who would become his senior associate a genera­ tion later. Innes soon became convinced that Kentucky's destiny could not be successfully realized within the confines of Virginia. The decisions of the district court were not final, and appeals had to be carried over the mountains to Richmond. There was no executive authority in Ken­ tucky. Nor was there anyone in the district with authority to call out the militia to retaliate against the Indians who frequently attacked isolated settlements. (Virginia laws empowered Kentuckians to take defensive action, but not to engage in activities that could be construed as offensive.)12 It seemed to the settlers that many Virginians (like other easterners) were not aware that Kentucky had a separate destiny from that of her parent state. Impatient with what he construed as Virginia's indifference, Innes quickly joined the movement for immedi­ ate and unconditional separation from Virginia. It would take eight years and ten conventions before Virginia, the United States, and Ken­ tucky could agree upon terms and before an acceptable constitution was finally written for the new state. Innes was a member of at least eight of these conventions. 13 Innes was not only opposed to the connection with Virginia, he was also doubtful about the value of the national government provided by the Articles of Confederation. Like other westerners, he was convinced that Congress was insensitive to the needs of the interior and he was angered when it contemplated surrendering for twenty-five years the navigation of the Mississippi River, "the first and greatest blessing of the Western Country." 14 Furthermore, he believed that government 11

Innes's most controversial client was his friend General James Wilkinson. Innes was careful to avoid conflicts of interest, and after he became federal judge he declined agencies and executorships from which litigation might arise that would be tried in his court. H e continued to practice law in the state courts, how­ ever. Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xx, Pt. ii, 3-285 to 3-288; Joseph Jones to Innes, Jan. 20, 1796, ibid., xxvi, Pt. ii, 7-158. 12 Innes to John Brown, Apr. 4, 1788, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xix, 10. 13 The conventions' records are incomplete, but the thread of continuity in the conventions, and Innes's participation, are traced in Watlington, Partisan Spirit, 98, 101, 103, 117, 123, 129, 159, 174, 184, 197. See also William Elsey Connelley and E[IHs] M[erton] Coulter, History of Kentucky, ed. Charles Kerr, ι (Chicago, 1922),226-285. 14 Innes to Brown, Apr. 4, 1788, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xix, 10. John Jay's willingness to cede navigation of the Mississippi in his negotiations with

33

JUDGE HARRY INNES

troops stationed at forts along the Ohio River were not there to protect Kentucky settlers from the Indians, but to prevent settlement on the national domain of the Northwest Territory. (He was partly correct: the troops had the dual mission of preventing settlement on unopened Indian lands and preventing Indian raids across the river.) 15 And when Kentuckians were authorized to conduct expeditions against the Indians, the government failed to reimburse them.1" Letters, petitions, and protests on all these matters were unavailing. To Innes, "such unequivocal proofs of the inattention paid to their repeated solicitations" justified a serious search for some other alternative.17 An alliance with Spain might be more useful than membership in the weak Confederation, because Spain held the Mississippi and exerted great influence among the southern Indians. Innes did not think that the proposed federal Constitution offered satisfactory solutions to Kentucky's problems, and he opposed its ratification. He feared the broad grant over commerce given to Congress because he expected that it would be dominated by the seaboard states and that they would continue to sacrifice navigation of the Mississippi for commercial agreements benefiting only the East. He complained to John Brown that "we shall be the mere vassals of the Congress and the consequences to me are horrible and dreadful."18 Ironically, in light of his later career, he also feared the power of the federal judiciary. He especially disliked the provisions in Article in for federal jurisdiction in diversity cases (those between citizens of different states) because he thought that suits would be brought against Kentuckians in a distant federal court and his countrymen would lose nine times out of ten. (He did not anticipate the geographically dispersed lower court system that the Judiciary Act of 1789 later provided. ) Many Kentuckians shared Innes's insistence upon immediate separation from Virginia and his rejection of the Constitution, although these Diego de Gardoqui was universally condemned by Kentuckians and by sympathetic Virginians. Marshall to Muter, Feb. 11, 1787, Johnson et al., eds., Marshall Papers, I, 204; Watlington, Partisan Spirit, 118. 15 Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789-1837 (New York, 1968), 14-17. 16 Eight years later, Kentuckians were still seeking payment for a 1785 expedition. Christopher Greenup to Thomas Jefferson, Jan. 28, 1793, Miscellaneous Letters of the Department of State, 1789-1906, M-179, roll 9, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives. (Hereafter cited as Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179). 17 Innes to Brown, Apr. 4, 1788, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xrx, 10. 18 Innes to Brown, Feb. 20, 1788 (typed transcript), ibid., xxvm, 9-204.

34

JUDGE HARRY INNES

views were not unchallenged. (Only three of the fourteen Kentucky delegates to the Virginia convention supported ratification, and the opposition of its western district contributed greatly to doubt about Virginia's decision. )1S> These disagreements over the wisdom of ratifying the Constitution and the timing and terms of separation from Virginia brought about the first political groupings in Kentucky. Each group accused the other of being a mere faction, but well before 1790 both groups possessed major characteristics of political parties: stability of membership and ideology, organizational structure, popular support, and conscious identification with national issues and personages. 20 The immediacy and clarity of the alternatives and the presence of sophisticated leaders stimulated the development of parties earlier in Kentucky than in many other parts of the new nation. 21 Most of those who wanted immediate and unconditional separation from Virginia were Antifederalists, and they sometimes considered Spain a more useful ally than Great Britain.22 Innes, Brown, and Todd were soon joined in Kentucky by George Nicholas, John Breckinridge, and Henry Clay. Together they considered themselves Republicans and looked to Thomas Jefferson for leadership in the emerging national party structure. 23 Over the following generation they retained a remarkable consistency in membership despite the emergence of new issues and programs at both the local and national levels. The challenge to this group came initially from the Marshall family, headed by Colonel Thomas Marshall. Although outnumbered, the MarshaIIs were not insignificant opponents. Colonel Marshall had a particularly vocal nephew and fifteen children, including the future 19 Connelley and Coulter, History of Kentucky, i, 252; Broadus Mitchell and Louise Pearson Mitchell, A Biography of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1964), 169; Watlington, Partisan Spirit, 155. 20 The Kentucky data has not yet been quantified, but available evidence supports both a substantive and a structural definition of party. This finding may be seen in a larger context described by H. James Henderson, "The First Party System," in Alden T. Vaughan and George Athan Billias, eds., Perspectives on Early American History (New York, 1973), 325-371. 21 A third factor, more difficult to measure but unquestionably present in Kentucky, was the degree of animosity engendered by such flamboyant personalities as James Wilkinson and Humphrey Marshall, whose activities tended to diminish the number of political neutrals. 22 There were some ideological inconsistencies in both groups, but personal allegiances were unwavering (except, perhaps, those of George Muter). 23 Jefferson, in turn, had a more comprehensive and sympathetic appreciation of the grievances of these Kentuckians than did most easterners. A full discussion of the issues involved and the positions held by participants in both sections is found in an editorial note, "Threat of Disunion in the West," Boyd et al., eds., Jefferson Papers, xrx, 429-518.

35

JUDGE HARRY INNES

chief justice (who had remained in Virginia when most of the rest of the family migrated to Kentucky). The Marshalls—the colonel, his sons and sons-in-law, and his nephew Humphrey Marshall—constituted the heart of the group opposing what they considered precipitate separation from Virginia. They supported the Constitution before and during ratification; they were Anglophiliac; and they considered that dealing with Spain was potentially if not actually treasonous. Colonel Marshall was an old friend of George Washington and his land agent in the West, and in time the loyalty Washington evoked was extended to Alexander Hamilton and John Adams and their policies. The Marshall kin became the nucleus of the Federalist party in Kentucky and provided an organized core for any other dissident groups who opposed the dominant Jeffersonian political establishment in the state.24 Humphrey Marshall, Colonel Marshall's son-in-law as well as his nephew, was the most intemperate member of the family. He seems to have believed that opponents of ratification remained Irreconcilables forever, somewhat like Royalists in the French Republic. However, Innes and Brown and their political allies pragmatically accepted the Constitution once ratification was assured. Brown was elected to represent the Kentucky District of Virginia in the House of Representatives and was United States senator from Kentucky from 1792 until 1805. While in New York for the convening of the First Congress, he used his considerable influence with the Virginians in the new government to secure federal positions for his friends. On September 28, 1789, he wrote to Innes: The Act establishing the Judicial Courts of the United States passed a few days ago and has rec d the approbation of the President . . . and it is with pleasure I add you are appointed Judge for the District of Kentucke. I was induced to take the liberty to recommend you to the President for this office from a confidence that the appoint24 Watlington argues in Partisan Spirit that in the 1780s there was also a third identifiable party which she calls the Partisans. Its membership was made up chiefly of settlers from Pennsylvania and North Carolina who had no land claims deriving from Virginia and were more liberal, democratic, and antislavery than were the Virginia-born leaders of the other two parties. The point is persuasively presented and may give a more accurate picture of the Kentucky political situation than the traditional one, which identifies only two parties and emphasizes Kentucky's Republican heritage. The power inherent in numbers may have made the Partisans important enough to have affected the policies of the federal court, but this influence cannot be identified through existing records or correspondence. The significant polarities for the present study remain those between Harry Innes and his Jeffersonian associates on one side, and Humphrey Marshall and the Federalists on the other.

36

JlTOGE HABRY INNES

ment would meet with the unanimous approbation of the District, and from a conviction that you were better qualified to fill it than any other we could hope to obtain. The Salary is 1000 Dollars . . . I could not at present get it raised beyond that sum as an opinion prevailed that the Business in that Court would be inconsiderable. . . . I flatter myself . . . that you will consent to accept the appoint­ ment] e[spec]ially as the Law does not prohibit you f [rom continu­ ing?] your present Docket. 25 Innes evidently found no inconsistency between his antifederalism and his appointment as judge of the United States Court for the Dis­ trict of Kentucky. He promptly took the oath of office and he consci­ entiously interpreted the Constitution whose ratification he had op­ posed. His lifestyle did not change once he went on the bench: it is obvious that he considered it as proper to continue to practice politics as it was to continue to practice law. Innes was apparently particularly useful to the Republican cause as a writer of broadsides and position papers, and only once showed embarrassment when his support for a candidate became publicly known. 26 He avoided public association with the Democratic Society when it was organized by John Breckin­ ridge in 1793 and later stated that he had never attended any of its meetings, although papers among his collection indicate that he had been an interested observer of its activities even if he was not a par­ ticipant. 27 Innes's political sympathies were not secret because he oc­ casionally published partisan statements in the Kentucky Gazette un25

Brown to Innes, Sept. 28, 1789, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xix, 18. Federal judges were permitted to practice law privately until 1812, as indicated by π Stat. 788. Innes had many clients and maintained a large practice in the state courts, as accounts and other memoranda among his papers prove. Innes Papers, Library of Congress; Innes Papers, Filson Club; Innes File, Manuscript Collection, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Ky.; Autographs File no. 25, ibid. Brown's role in securing the appointment of Innes as judge and George Nicholas as at­ torney is confirmed by a letter from Washington's secretary to Brown, enclosing the two commissions of office with the suggestion that he had better means of conveyance than did the president. George Washington (by Tobias Lear) to John Brown, Oct. 2, 1789, Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179, roll 2. The first post road to Kentucky was not begun until 1792 when one was authorized from Rich­ mond, Va. to Danville, Ky. The mail was irregular and slow for years after that, as letters from Thomas Todd to Innes in 1807 demonstrate, ι Stat. 232, sec. 1; Todd to Innes, Sept. 23, 1807, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xvni, 2-92; Todd to Innes, Sept. 27, 1807, ibid., 2-93. 26 Statement on the candidacy of John Jouett, July 21, 1807, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xvm, 2-91. « Statement of Jan. 29, 1808, ibid., xrx, 196, 114, 124.

37

JUDGE HAHRY INNES

der his well-known pseudonym, "A Farmer." 28 Whether it was superior leadership or a surer manipulation of popular issues that was responsible—or both—the Innes-Brown-Nicholas group were even more successful politically after the adoption of the Constitution than they had been earlier. The irony of their achievement was not appreciated by Colonel Marshall, who complained bitterly to George Washington that they had gotten "almost every post of power or proffit in the state fill'd by their friends and adherents." 29 The correspondence with John Brown and other Kentuckians in Congress and occasional letters from Jefferson show that Innes was kept well informed on national and international events. But his involvement in these matters seems to have been limited to their impact on the local concerns of Kentuckians. Innes's interests were almost strictly parochial: he was first a Kentuckian and only distantly and secondly an American. The strength of his political convictions owed more to his uncompromising antifederalism than to any positive adoption of Jeffersonian principles. What Innes shared most spontaneously with Jefferson was a common interest in grape culture, moldboard plows, merino sheep, shepherd dogs, and Indian artifacts.30 The judge had little of Jefferson's eighteenth-century optimism or his faith in the virtue and wisdom of the people. Innes felt dismayed and threatened by political equality, and his response to universal manhood suffrage was decidedly elitist: The people of Kentucky are all turned Politicians from the highest in Office to the Peasant. The Peasantry are perfectly mad. Extraordinary prejudices and without foundation have arisen against the present Officers of Government, the Lawyers and the Men of Fortune. They say plain honest Farmers are the only men who ought to be elected to form our [state] Constitution. What will be the end of these prejudices it is difficult to say, they have given a very serious alarm to every thinking man, who is determined to watch and court the temper of the people. 31 28 See, for examples, the partisan analyses of Kentucky politics and candid electioneering written by "A Farmer" which was "published at the request of a pure Democratic Society," Kentucky Gazette (Lexington), Mar. 1, 1794; Mar. 8, 1794. 29 Thomas Marshall to George Washington, Sept. 7, 1792, George Washington Papers, Library of Congress (microfilm), reel 102. 30 Thomas Jefferson to Innes, June 20, 1806, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xxi, Pt. ii, 1-189; Jefferson to Innes, May 23, 1793, ibid., xxi, Pt. i, 1-15; Jefferson to Innes, Sept. 18, 1813, ibid., Pt. ii, 1-271; Innes to Jefferson, July 8, 1790, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (microfilm), reel 20. (Hereafter cited as Jefferson Papers.) 31 Innes to Jefferson, Aug. 27, 1791, Jefferson Papers (microfilm), reel 23.

38

JUDGE HABRY INNES

Grand jury addresses provided a convenient opportunity to express his philosophy, and Innes sometimes repeated favorite observations, such as that of "the depravity of the manners of mankind increasing with their numbers." 32 He considered his convictions to be self-evident and confirmed by common experience: It being a received opinion that Man is of so depraved a Nature as not to be trusted to himself, and that the Commission or Omission of certain Acts are prejudicial to the Community, it is absolutely necessary that there should be a punishment inflicted on Offenders, otherwise we should soon fall into a state of Savage Barbarity, for the allurements of Vice are so pleasing that we are apt to be caught in the mesh before we are aware of danger; for in a general sense of things, most of our Actions which are termed pleasure are more or less Vicious, and so corrupt are the manners of our Citizens that their conduct may be termed Licentiousness. . . . It is an undeniable fact. Vice and immorality daily increases among us, and every Evil which can possibly arise is to be [ avoid ]ed: Profanity, Lust, Avarice, Intemperance, and Cruelty are the usual attendants on a Vicious Mind.33 Innes sometimes sounded like a seventeenth-century Puritan magistrate in his concern with private behavior. Portions of his addresses were indistinguishable from sermons, as when he wrote: Blasphemy, Profane cursing and swearing, Adultery, Fornication, Breaking of the Sabbath and Drunkenness, are offensive to the Devine and Human Laws, these are Crimes which too many think of a very light and trivial Nature . . . but every person must on reflection admit. . . that the Guilty are threatened with the severest denunciations of God's wrath, and it must be acknowledged, that the commission of those Crimes, open a Door to Offences of the most pernicious consequences to Society.34 If Innes had little confidence in humanity in general, he was even more skeptical about women in particular. In a lawsuit challenging a conveyance of land by a preacher to his landlady, the judge was convinced that the donor had been "entrapped by the smiles and artifices of a subtle artful woman into an excess of passion too powerful for his reason to correct." The "snares [which] were extended to catch and 32 Grand Jury Address, n.d. (1784?), Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xvm, 2-25. 33 Grand jury address, n.d., but apparently before 1789, ibid., 2-120. a* Ibid.

39

JUDGE HARRY INNES

bind" him were not, in Innes's opinion, uncommon: "The influence which the fair sex has over the mind of man has been fatal to many, there are I presume very few men who have not at some period of their lives experienced in greater or lesser degree this influence."35 Innes's attitudes did not diminish his reputation or responsibilities. In 1790 Secretary of War Henry Knox authorized him to organize Kentucky's defense against the Indians. Innes had discretionary power to employ and equip scouts—who were more expensive but more effective than militia—and shared responsibility for planning strategy.30 (He then spent five years trying to collect the promised compensation from the War Department, which made the honor of having had "superintending power over the Business" seem an empty one, and increased his frustration with the national government.) 37 Outspokenly critical of St. Clair's defeat in 1791, Innes continued to demand more efficient organization and more effective leadership of American forces. He had a typical frontiersman's opinion of Indians and considered them to be savages with inferior claims to the land. But he condemned settlers who violated treaties or committed outrages on peaceful Indians and thereby invited retaliation.38 Innes's local duties included spearheading the effort to improve the Wilderness Road, which in the early 1790s was only a trail over the mountains. This route was sometimes safer from Indians than travel down the Ohio River, but it was too narrow and steep to permit transport of goods or families easily. With Levi Todd, Innes raised money for the project, purchased supplies, found workers, and supervised construction.39 Innes was also involved in both of the Kentucky constitutional conventions held during the state's first decade. The first constitution (1792) was based in large part on ideas that had been discussed and debated in the Political Club and was drafted by Innes's close friend, George Nicholas.40 One of its provisions gave the state supreme court 35 Montgomery v. Viers and Wife, "Cases in the Court of the United States for the District of Kentucky, from its first Organization to the year 1806 Inclusive," 329-334, United States Court for the Western District of Kentucky, Louisville. (Hereafter cited as Innes Opinions.) 36 Knox to Innes, Apr. 13, 1790, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xix, 31. " Brown to Innes, Apr. 27, 1790, ibid., 33; Innes to War Dept, May 13, 1795, ibid., 142. 38 Innes to the secretary of war [Henry Dearborn], Oct. 14, 1802, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xxi, Pt. ii, 1-145. 39 Account Book of John Logan, Innes Papers, Filson Club; Robert L. Kincaid, The Wilderness Road (Harrogate, Tenn., 1955), 185. 40 Political Club Records, Filson Club. The role of the Political Club, many of whose members participated in the first convention, has been largely overlooked

40

JUDGE HARHY INNES

original and final jurisdiction over land cases. The measure has sometimes been cited as evidence of local resentment of the federal court, which had concurrent authority in many of the land cases. But this interpretation overlooks the facts that the Kentucky constitution did not assert exclusive jurisdiction in land cases, and that Innes participated in the convention and apparently expressed no opposition to the clause. Furthermore, whatever Nicholas's role in the framing of the document, it is highly unlikely that he would have tried to diminish the jurisdiction of the court presided over by Innes, who was his political ally. What did concern them and other Kentuckians was that under the Virginia land law, a competing claimant to Kentucky lands could prevent issuance of a patent by filing a Caveat in a Virginia court. This tended to favor nonresidents because it required Kentuckians to endure the inconvenience and expense of defending their claims in Richmond, and was one of the principal reasons why statehood was desired by the people of the western district.41 After the work of the convention was completed and the new state government went into operation, Innes was selected chief judge of the state Court of Appeals. He declined the appointment, preferring the federal judgeship, apparently because Kentucky provided only meager salaries for the officers of its highest court.42 Innes's refusal of the state position did not mean that he was uninterested in the problems of local government. By the time of the second constitutional convention in 1799, he was a prominent person whose judgment was sought and he played a leading role in formulating the and the significance of Nicholas's important contribution has been correspondingly exaggerated. Part of the reason for this is that Humphrey Marshall ascribed the first constitution "if to any one man, to Nicholas." Humphrey Marshall, History of Kentucky (1812; rev. ed. in 2 vols., Frankfort, 1824), i, 414. This statement has been gradually expanded to a recent assertion that "he [Nicholas] prepared assiduously for the convention, and, when it met, immediately obtained control of it." Richard E. Ellis, The Jefjersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (New York, 1971), 128. Marshall did not mention the preparatory role of the Political Club, perhaps because he was for a time blackballed from membership. Political Club Records, Filson Club. 41 The provision is found in Art. v, sec. 3, first constitution of Kentucky ( 1 7 9 2 ) . Disagreement over its possible conflict with the supremacy clause in Article vi of the United States Constitution was argued in Wihon v. Mason, 1 Cranch 45 (1801) and is discussed in Chapter Eight. The present interpretation of its purpose is shared by Watlington, in Partisan Spirit, 16, 219. The proceedings of the convention and Innes's participation may be traced in Journal of the First Constitutional Convention of Kentucky, Held in Danville, Kentucky, April 2 to 19, 1792 (Lexington, Ky., 1942 [orig. publ. 1792]). 42 Ky. Gaz., June 30, 1792; Brown to Innes, Apr. 13, 1792, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xix, 9 1 .

41

JUDGE HABRY INNES

new Kentucky constitution. Elected as a delegate from Franklin County, he was chosen on the second day to be honorary chairman of the proceedings and was also one of the twelve-member committee on privileges and elections. This second constitutional convention operated daily by resolving itself into a committee of the whole and considering revision of specific sections of the existing constitution. Innes was on the drafting committee that met after each day's debates to formulate the new provisions, which would then be presented to the convention the following morning. He voted with the majority on fifteen of twenty-five recorded ballots; significantly, he was among the minority who proposed amendments designed to protect the independence of the state judiciary.43 Judicial, legal, and political commitments did not consume all of Innes's intellect and energy: every aspect of his public and private life was colored by his unremitting contempt for Humphrey Marshall. It was a passion that was matched and returned by its object. There is scarcely a year during the last quarter-century of Innes's life for which his papers do not reflect his hatred for a man who was generally recognized as an unrelenting opponent. It is even possible that the emotional content of the judge's inflexible antifederalism was due to Marshall's association with the opposition party and its most obstructive policies. As early as 1792, Innes publicly dismissed Marshall in a newspaper statement: "If he was a man of character, I would adopt proper measures to punish him for insolence. . . . But as Coriolanus [Marshall's pseudonym] is that abandoned man Humphrey Marshall, of Woodford County, I shall take no further notice of him."44 It was a vain hope. No one was able to ignore Humphrey Marshall. He was a formidable antagonist—suspicious, sharp-tongued, and tenacious. His invective created such passages as this, written about Innes eight years after his death: Nevertheless, to this day, it is a matter of doubt, whether the head, or the heart, of this man, is most to be pitied, censured, or despised. Some suppose him not only weak in reasoning, and in judgment, but corrupt and debased in principle; while others think, that the imbe43 Journal of the Convention, Begun and Held at the Capitol in the Town of Frankfort on Monday the Twenty-Second Day of July, in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand, Seven Hundred and Ninety-Nine (n.p., [1799]), M S Coll., Kentucky Historical Society. 44 Ky. Gaz., Dec. 1, 1792. A clipping is in Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xvni, 2-42.

42

JUDGE HABEY INNES

cility of his intellect, the prevalence of his vanity, and the impor­ 45 tance of his office as criminal prosecutor, exposed him to flattery. Because Marshall wrote the most popular of the early histories of Kentucky, such passages have doubtless contributed to clouding the reputation of Judge Innes and to obscuring the positive work accom­ plished in the early federal courts. No attempt at revision has yet been able to compete successfully with Marshall's uninhibited and colorful attacks upon Innes and numerous other adversaries. John Brown, a more temperate man than Innes, referred to Marshall's "insensibility and meanness." 46 Thomas Todd called him "that abandoned and prof­ ligate villain."47 Henry Clay, who was less restrained, eventually fought a duel with him. 4 8 Even Marshall's great-nephew, who wrote the ge­ nealogy of the family and praised every other member of it, said that he was "violent, profane and irreligious. He had but little respect for God or man." 4 9 Any friend of Innes was an enemy of Marshall, who assailed them all for their political convictions, private behavior, and professional incompetence. His attacks were returned in kind, and the charges and countercharges echoed for generations afterwards. 50 The intensity, duration, and mutual belligerence of their conflict was truly remark­ able, even in a state noted for its feuds. The climax of their warfare began in July 1806 after an advisory jury in Innes's court noted evidence of fraud in a land case and Marshall was generally believed to have been responsible. Marshall bitterly criticized Innes's custom of relying upon the advice of juries in chan­ cery cases, but the damage to Marshall's cause had been done, and 45

Marshall, History of Kentucky, i, 311. Brown to Innes, Dec. 29, 1792, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xix, 98. Todd to Innes, Sept. 27, 1807, ibid., xvm, 2-93. 48 Henry Clay to James Clark, Jan. 19, 1809, James F. Hopkins and Mary W. M. Hargreaves, eds., The Papers of Henry Clay, ι (Lexington, Ky., 1959), 400. 49 W[illiam] MfcClung] Paxton, The Marshall Family (Cincinnati, 1885), 81. Marshall's irreligious diatribes are believed to have been so offensive to his Vic­ torian descendants that they burned his papers. 50 John Mason Brown, The Political Beginnings of Kentucky (Louisville, Ky., 1889); Thomas Marshall Green, The Spanish Conspiracy (Cincinnati, 1891); Temple Bodley, "Introduction," in [William Littell], Reprints of LUteU's Political Transactions In and Concerning Kentucky and Letter of George Nicholas To his friend in Virginia also General Wilkinsons Memorial (Louisville, Ky., 1926 [orig. publ. Frankfort, Ky., 1806]); Temple Bodley, History of Kentucky, ι (Chicago, 1928); John Mason Brown to Harry Innes Todd, Sept. 5, 1884, John Mason Brown File, MS Coll., Kentucky Historical Society. 46

47

43

JUDGE HARRY INNES

Innes dismissed the suit in November. 51 Thomas Bodley, the husband of Innes's stepdaughter, then began a campaign in the Kentucky House of Representatives to censure Marshall and expel him from his seat in that body. The campaign was successful in 1808, but Marshall was reelected in 1809.52 Meanwhile, in the summer of 1806, Marshall directed a newspaper crusade through the Frankfort Western World against Court of Appeals Judge Benjamin Sebastian, a friend of Innes. Sebastian was accused of receiving a pension from the Spanish to promote the separation of Kentucky from the Union. Marshall's cries of treason were not new, but for the first time there appeared to be substance to his charges. A select committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives began an investigation and called Judge Innes as a witness, who admitted that he had learned a few months earlier that Sebastian was receiving a pension from Spain.53 He then went on to volunteer the information that in November 1795 he, George Nicholas, and William Murray had encouraged Sebastian to investigate an overture made by Baron Francisco de Carondelet, Spanish governor of Louisiana. While Sebastian was in New Orleans, news of the Treaty of San Lorenzo, granting free navigation of the Mississippi to Americans, reached the governor. Sebastian's mission was rendered moot. But de Carondelet delayed putting the treaty into effect and once again the Kentuckians questioned the efficacy of the national government. Furthermore, Innes disclosed that in 1797 de Carondelet sent another agent to Kentucky who offered a bribe of $100,000 to Sebastian, Nicholas, Murray, Innes, and their allies in return for their efforts to separate the western country from the Union and establish a government that would treat independently with Spain. Innes reported that he and Nicholas had immediately and indignantly refused the bribe and, through Colonel James Morrison, had informed James Ross, a Federalist United States senator from Pennsylvania who was then visiting Kentucky. Innes insisted that they did not make the offer pub51 The suit involved a 6,666%-acre tract originally claimed both by Levi Todd and Prettyman Merry. Marshall, claiming under Todd's entry, was thought to have mutilated the margin of the land office records so that a subsequent withdrawal from entry of 6,276% acres could not be proven, and Marshall could gain the entire area. 52 Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Investigate Certain Charges against Humphrey Marshall, Feb. 19, 1808, Innes Papers, Library of Congress,

XVIII, 53

2-96.

Bodley, "Introduction," in Reprints of Littell's Political Transactions, xcvii-cx; Green, Spanish Conspiracy, 336-383; AnnaL· of Congress, 10th Cong., 1 sess., 2759-2790.

44

JUDGE HARRY INNES

lie or inform President John Adams because they believed that the administration would use the incident as a pretext to send troops into Kentucky.54 Their fears may have been justified, because as everyone knew, Kentucky was still suffering from what Colonel Thomas Marshall had earlier called "Monongalia fever"—continued evasion of the six-year-old whiskey tax.55 Troops had been sent to Pennsylvania: they might well be sent to Kentucky. And Innes and his friends believed that if they were, Kentuckians would not submit as tamely as their allies up the river. Instead, a federal army "could only excite resentment and disgust, and might produce what it was meant to prevent [i.e., a rebellion]." 56 Marshall rejected Innes's explanation. But Innes was so confident that he could convince objective observers of his innocence and rectitude that he asked the Kentucky representatives in Washington to request the Speaker of the House to appoint a committee to investigate his conduct. It happened, however, that Congress was then distracted by a separate matter with which Innes had been involved, and Henry Clay advised the judge that the times were "inauspicious to an investigation, by Congress, into your Conduct, if at any time it would be proper."57 That other matter was the affair of Aaron Burr. It was only a matter of weeks since two successive grand juries in Innes's court had refused to indict Burr for treason, despite the strenuous efforts of the federal district attorney in Kentucky, Joseph Hamilton Daveiss.58 In January it appeared that Daveiss had been right, and the judge's interpretation of due process might have facilitated Burr's escape down the Mississippi. Further complicating the situation was the fact that 54 The mechanism was not unfamiliar to Innes. In 1788 he had reported to George Washington on the activities of a British agent who was trying to organize Kentuckians for a British-supported attack on New Orleans, and in 1794 he had warned Thomas Jefferson about preparations for a French-supported expedition against New Orleans. Innes to Washington, Dec. 18, 1788, Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179, roll 2. A copy of the letter is in Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xxvi, Pt. ii, 7-297. The reply is Washington to Innes, Mar. 2, 1789, John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799 (Washington, D.C., 1939-1944), xxx, 214. Innes to Jefferson, Jan. 2 1 , 1794, Jefferson Papers (microfilm), reel 32. 55 See Chapter Five. 56 Caleb Wallace to Innes, June 6, 1807, copied in Innes to Wilson Cary Nicholas, June 10, 1807, Papers of Thomas Jefferson in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, given by Thomas Jefferson Coolidge. (Hereafter cited as Jefferson-Coolidge Papers, M S Coll., Massachusetts Historical Society.) 57 Clay to Innes, Jan. 24, 1807, Hopkins and Hargreaves, eds., Chy Papers, i, 270. 58 See Chapter Six.

45

JUDGE HARRY INNES

Daveiss was Humphrey Marshall's brother-in-law and his closest political ally. The remarkable coincidence of the Sebastian investigation and the Burr affair proved most unfortunate for Innes. While Daveiss attacked Innes about the Burr affair, Marshall attacked Innes about the stunning revelations of the Sebastian investigation. Securing the resignation of Sebastian was only a first step: Marshall hoped to remove all the Kentucky Bepublican leaders from power. His suspicions converged on the charge that they had been conspiring with the Spanish for twenty years.59 While General James Wilkinson, John Brown, Thomas Todd, and George Nicholas (who had died in 1799) were among those also accused, the point of the attack was focused upon Innes. Marshall exploited his long-awaited opportunity to discredit Innes once and for all and began a drive to impeach him through the pages of the Western World which soon reached the Kentucky General Assembly. A resolution strongly supported by Marshall condemning Innes and calling for an impeachment inquiry passed the House of Representatives. The Kentucky Senate, however, was willing only to ask for an investigation without an accusation of guilt. The Senate resolution was eventually accepted by the House by the slim margin of one vote, that of Innes's ally, Henry Clay, who as Speaker broke the tie.60 Innes, of course, knew that an impeachment inquiry would have an entirely different tone from an inquiry conducted in response to his own request. He began a four-pronged counteroffensive: he initiated one libel suit against Humphrey Marshall and another against the publisher of the Western World, he subsidized publication of an alternative version of events, and he wrote to Wilson Cary Nicholas, the surviving brother of George Nicholas, to head off impeachment. 61 In a 59 Humphrey Marshall's suspicions evidently derived from those of Colonel Thomas Marshall, which were first aroused when John Brown wrote to George Muter in 1788 describing an overture made by Diego de Gardoqui. Brown's innocence is suggested by his report to James Madison that it was "not only improper but impracticable." Brown to Madison, Nov. 23, 1788, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress (microfilm), reel 3. For a discussion of the evidence relating to the Spanish conspiracy and the subsequent historiographical literature, see Boyd et al., eds., Jefferson Papers, xix, 469-478; Watlington, Partisan Spirit, 253-260. 60 "Resolutions Relating to Judge Innes," Hopkins and Hargreaves, eds., Clay Papers, i, 319. 61 Innes, Todd, Brown, and Caleb Wallace (a judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals) paid for William Littell's Political Transactions In and Concerning Kentucky, From The First Settlement Thereof, Until It Became An Independent State, in June, 1792 (Frankfort, 1806), which was intended to contradict Marshall's accusations.

46

JUDGE HABRY INNES

remarkable series of letters he recounted the events that had been disclosed during the Sebastian investigation, described the mood of Kentuckians a decade earlier, and encouraged Nicholas to use his influence to save his deceased brother's reputation—and, of course, Innes's own.02 For his part, Nicholas forwarded the correspondence to the president, and Jefferson then weighed the evidence for and against an acquaintance with whom he had shared political and agricultural information for twenty-five years."3 He could not have failed to appreciate the fact that the campaign against the Republican federal judge in Kentucky was led by the Federalist cousin and brother-in-law of Chief Justice John Marshall, Jefferson's own political adversary. Fortunately for Innes and for the president, Humphrey Marshall did not have access to the Spanish archives in Seville and Madrid. Two letters found there were published in 1928 and show that in 1794 Innes had been sufficiently interested in a Spanish connection to write to the Spanish governor at Natchez, Colonel Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, asking about concrete proposals and assurances of indemnity, and requesting answers in code."4 Innes clearly had not been as innocent as he claimed. These Innes letters were written on February 14, 1794 and December 11, 1794, dates that bracketed a critical period for Kentucky. It was during those ten months that the bonds holding Kentucky in the Union were severely strained. When Innes wrote his first letter, the statehood for which Kentuckians had so long struggled seemed of little value: the national government appeared unwilling or unable to help solve the problems of the West and, on the contrary, was attempting to tax its most liquid asset. It seemed to have given up negotiations with Spain for the free navigation of the Mississippi. Kentuckians expected another Indian war in the summer, but if Secretary of War Henry Knox still advocated economizing by fighting Indians with regular troops armed with muskets, many thought it would result in a defeat as disastrous as those of Harmar and St. Clair.65 Kentuckians 62 Innes to Wilson Cary Nicholas, June 9, 1807; June 10, 1807; July 6, 1807; Oct. 18, 1807; Edmund Randolph to Cary Nicholas, Oct. 19, 1807 (copy in Innes's handwriting); Innes to Wilson Cary Nicholas, Nov. 16, 1807; Jan. 12, 1808; Feb. 25, 1808 (two letters); Nov. 18, 1808; Jefferson-Coolidge Papers, Ms Coll., Massachusetts Historical Society.

63 The letters are labeled in Jefferson's handwriting, apparently for filing among his papers. 64 Arthur Preston Whitaker, "Harry Innes and the Spanish Intrigue; 17941795," Mississippi VaUey Historical Review, xv (1928), 236-248. 65 Boyd et al., eds., Jefferson Papers, xix, 436-442. In May, Knox suggested recruiting mounted volunteers from Kentucky in order to divert them from at-

47

JUDGE HARRY INNES

knew from mortal experience that successful Indian warfare required a more expensive system of scouts and rangers backed by mounted militia armed with rifles. While Innes awaited an answer from Gayoso to his first letter, relations with the Washington administration got worse. Kentuckians learned in May that John Jay, who was widely distrusted because of his earlier willingness to barter away navigation of the Mississippi, had gone to London to negotiate with the British, and they feared the concessions he might make. They learned in July of still another revenue act. They learned in September that the president had called up 15,000 troops and moved them into Pennsylvania to end the resistance to the whiskey tax. The only bright spot in the year was the news of Anthony Wayne's victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, where mounted Kentucky riflemen vindicated the westerners' military judgment."0 But no Indian cession was immediately forthcoming: the Treaty of Greenville was not concluded until a year later, in August 1795. Thus, until the government of the United States negotiated successfully with the Indians and the Spanish, it seemed to be of little use to Kentucky. Some concluded that an alliance with Spain, instead, was a prerequisite to survival. Furthermore, many who had survived the Revolution thought that negotiating with Spain was much more patriotic than negotiating with Great Britain. During the year when other Kentuckians expressed their dissatisfaction by adopting "A Remonstrance to the President and Congress" at mass meetings throughout the state and by refusing to register their stills or pay duties on their whiskey, Innes expressed his discontent by asking the Spanish what they specifically had to offer. However curious or tempted he may have been, his taste for intrigue ended abruptly by Christmas time, when the coincidental timing of three unrelated events put an end to his unilateral inquiries. The first threatened his professional position. A man named Owen who was traveling up river was murdered near Evansville. The victim was said to have been carrying $6,000 from Governor de Carondelet to General Wilkinson at Fort Washington (Cincinnati). Owen's oarsmen were suspected of the murder and subsequent theft; three of them were captured in Kentucky and brought before Judge Innes at Franktacking Spanish territories. Knox to Washington, May 12, 1794, Washington Papers (microfilm), reel 105. ™Ky. Gaz., May 31, 1794; July 26, 1794; Sept. 27, 1794; Nov. 29, 1794; Jan. 3, 1795.

48

JUDGE HARBY INNES

fort. Innes obviously wanted nothing to do with the whole affair. He hastily denied jurisdiction on the grounds that the men were Spanish subjects and sent them under guard to Wilkinson, who eventually had them returned to New Madrid.117 The second event threatened his reputation. Despite Innes's insistence upon discretion and the use of a code, Gayoso answered in English and entrusted his letter to a garrulous agent who wandered through Kentucky freely announcing that he carried a message from the Spanish governor for Judge Innes. Furthermore, Gayoso promised nothing but required that Kentucky must establish its independence before negotiations could be pursued. Innes was indignant, and replied on December 11 that unless "real and substantial advantages" and "unequivocal assurances of indemnity" were guaranteed, "no change can ever be expected." He again stressed the importance of secrecy and ciphers.68 The third event was perhaps the most effective deterrent of all, an appeal based upon family loyalty. On Christmas Day, the judge's brother James paid him a timely visit. James Innes was a leader of the Virginia bar and a close friend of President Washington, but was ill and so huge that travel of any kind was exceedingly difficult for him. Only something of extraordinary importance could have inspired the long and arduous journey from Virginia. Innes's charge, it turned out, was to bring a personal message from the president informing Kentuckians that he was making a new and major effort to secure free navigation of the Mississippi. For although Kentuckians had not then known it, the administration had realized during the summer the seriousness of the disaffection of the West. During the same weeks that the cabinet debated and finally determined to end the rebelliousness in Pennsylvania by force, Secretary of State Edmund Randolph persuaded Washington to employ a different strategy for Kentucky. That strategy, which took months to «' Thomas P. Abemethy, The South in the New Nation, 1789-1819, in Wendell H. Stephenson and E. Merton Coulter, eds., A History of the South, iv (Baton Rouge, La., 1961), 197-199. Abernethy believed the money was to pay Wilkinson a Spanish pension and to compensate him for expenses incurred in thwarting George Rogers Clark's French-supported proposed expedition against New Orleans. It is possible, however, that the money was to pay Wilkinson for goods earlier shipped downriver. Wilkinson's business ventures are described ibid., 47-48; 63-69. As late as 1813, Innes apparently thought Wilkinson innocent of illicit dealings with the Spanish. Innes to Madison, Apr. 25, 1813, Madison Papers (microfilm), reel 15. osWhitaker, "Harry Innes," MVHR, xv (1928), 239.

49

JUDGE HARRY INNES

implement, was to send one emissary to Spain and another to Kentucky.''3 And so James Innes was chosen to do what an army could never accomplish—convince the people of Kentucky, including his own brother, of the good will and the commitment of the national government. James Innes brought details of William Carmichael's preliminary negotiations and Thomas Pinckney's appointment as envoy extraordinary and commissioner plenipotentiary to settle all matters of navigation, boundaries, and commerce with the Spanish government. (Innes was also instructed to explore the local response to the insurrection in Pennsylvania and an effective method to secure compliance with the revenue laws in Kentucky.) 70 The negotiations with the Spanish court were to be given the widest possible publicity. Since the Kentucky General Assembly had just adjourned and that forum was unavailable, the Innes brothers encouraged Governor Isaac Shelby to publicize the Carmichael-Pinckney mission through the newspapers. 71 The news and the conciliatory approach bought time for the government, but barely enough. In 1795 its promises were made good in the Treaties of Greenville (concluded in August) and San Lorenzo (October). In the former, the Indians ceded the southeastern corner of the Northwest Territory, making the Ohio River safe as far west as the mouth of the Kentucky River; in the latter, the Spanish gave the liSI Edmund Randolph to William Bradford, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry Knox, July 11, 1794, Harold C. Syrett et al., eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1961), xvi, 588; Randolph to Washington, Aug. 7, 1794, Domestic Letters of the Department of State, M-40, roll 7 (hereafter cited as Domestic Letters, Dept. of State, M-40); Randolph to James Innes, Aug. 22, 1794, ibid.; Randolph to the governor of Kentucky [Isaac Shelby], Aug. 15, 1794, Aug. 25, 1794, and Nov. 16, 1794, ibid. Randolph, on Washington's behalf, asked Jefferson to go to Spain as commissioner plenipotentiary and, when he refused, asked Patrick Henry. Randolph to Jefferson, Aug. 28, 1794, ibid. When Henry also refused, Randolph turned to Pinckney who was minister to the Court of St. James but was then playing a subordinate role to John Jay while he was in London as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary. Samuel Flagg Bemis, Pinckney's Treaty: America's Advantage from Europe's Distress, 17831800 (New Haven, Conn., 1960 [orig. publ. 1926]), 247. It was almost as difficult to get Innes's mission underway: he became ill shortly after accepting the appointment and Randolph, citing the beneficent effects of "easy journies" and "northern air," urged him "betake yourself to the road, even before your strength is absolutely re-established." Randolph to Innes, Sept. 5, 1794, Domestic Letters, Dept. of State, M-40, roll 7. Cf. Richard H. Kohn, "The Washington Administration's Decision to Crush the Whiskey Rebellion," Journal of American History, LIX (1972), 567-584. '""Instructions for Col. James Innes," Nov. 11, 1794, Domestic Letters, Dept. of State, M-40, roll 7. « Innes to Shelby, Jan. 17, 1795, Isaac Shelby Papers, M S Dept., Filson Club. A full report covered more than three pages in Ky. Gaz., Mar. 14, 1795.

50

JUDGE HARRY INNES

Americans a renewable three-year right to navigate the Mississippi and a grant of deposit at New Orleans. The administration also concluded a less public treaty with leading Kentucky distillers by which duties that had accrued before July 1794 were forgiven in return for a promise to comply with the internal revenue acts after that date. 72 If the news of Pinckney's treaty had reached Kentucky sooner, and if the Spanish had immediately complied with its provisions, presumably Innes would not have reopened negotiations in 1795 through Sebastian, and would have been spared the later embarrassment of that association.73 Of course Innes was not one to offer evidence of his own culpability, and when Marshall accused him in 1806 of participating in a Spanish conspiracy, the judge never mentioned the 1794 letters to Gayoso. Innes gambled on revealing some while concealing the rest, and continued to assert the patriotism of his motives. Marshall was not assuaged. Nor was John Rowan, Marshall's ally from Louisville, Kentucky, who led the fight for Innes's impeachment in the federal House of Representatives. 74 In the spring of 1808 Rowan secured the appointment of a select committee: to inquire into the conduct of Harry Innes, District Judge of the United States for the District of Kentucky, relative to his having, while in the tenure of his office as aforesaid, been party or privy to a project, on the part of Spain, or her subjects, to dismember these United States, or to the seduction of the State of Kentucky from this Union; or relative to his having been party or privy, during the time aforesaid, to a project of France, or her citizens, to embroil these United States in a war with Spain; or relative to his having illicitly corresponded with both or either of the Governments aforesaid, or their subjects or citizens, upon one or both projects aforesaid, or relative to his having known and concealed from this Government one or both the said projects.75 The seven-member committee which considered the depositions of the Sebastian investigation and Innes's copies of the correspondence ™ See Chapter Five. 73 Innes was not alone in his impatience and apparent skepticism. On Nov. 19, 1795, the Kentucky House of Representatives passed a resolution instructing the state's United States senators to find out what was going on in the negotiations with Spain. Statement by Thomas Todd, then clerk of the Kentucky House of Representatives, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xix, 148. 74 Rowan is usually associated with Bardstown because the home he built there, named Federal Hill, was made famous by Stephen Foster as "My Old Kentucky Home." 75 Annals of Congress, 10th Cong., 1 sess., 2757.

51

JUDGE HAREY INNES

of 1795-1797 included Rowan. He insisted that the evidence was sufficient to impeach, but after three weeks a majority reported that Innes "had not so acted as to require the interposition of the Constitutional powers of this House." Rowan demanded an immediate decision, but the House would not be hurried. On a roll call vote of forty-eight to twenty-five it committed the report to a committee of the whole, which required each member to consider the facts and thereby created further delay.76 Time was running out in the session, and Rowan wanted another select committee to continue the investigation during adjournment. But a majority of the House believed other matters were more important than allegations of an earlier Spanish conspiracy and ancient dangers of secession of the West. In 1808 it was England and France who challenged national survival, and New England that then threatened to leave the Union. Furthermore, the House had lost its earlier enthusiasm for removing federal judges, possibly because this one was a Republican. Rowan was declared out of order and the matter remained in the committee of the whole, never again to be reconsidered.77 Innes's position was saved, but his vindication awaited. Back in Kentucky, two years later, he won his libel suit against Western World publisher Joseph Street. The Jessamine County jury who heard the case assessed damages which Innes, on Henry Clay's advice, refused to forgive. Street was forced to transfer all his property to the judge and leave the state.78 The suit against Humphrey Marshall, however, dragged on for years, and did not go to trial until 1815. What happened then, like many things in the Innes-Marshall feud, is a matter of dispute between the descendants of these remarkable protagonists. Whether the case was dismissed, the jury was hung, or the prosecution discontinued is unclear. 79 Evidently a juror was withdrawn to avert a verdict while a 76 Ibid., 1886, 2197, 2247-2250. Not all members of the House can be identified by party affiliation, but apparently only four Federalists voted with the Republican majority, suggesting that the political ramifications were recognized. However, half of the nays appear to have been Republicans. " Ibid., 2273. 78 Innes's evidence for the trials against Street and Marshall is scattered throughout the Innes Papers, Library of Congress, but most of the relevant papers are in xvm, xix, and xxn, Pts. i, ii. Clay to Innes, Apr. 21, 1812, is also in Hopkins and Hargreaves, eds., Claxj Papers, i, 648. Thomas Todd, too, sued Street for libel. The suit was dismissed in 1810 with the defendant assuming all costs. Todd to Clay, May 23, 1807, ibid., 295. 79 E.g., compare Green, Spanish Conspiracy, 375-379, with Bodley, "Introduction," in Reprints of Littell's Political Transactions, cix-cxii.

52

JUDGE HARRY INNES

compromise was arranged. It is a matter of record that a mutual acquaintance of these two ancient enemies induced them both to sign a public statement. In it they pledged "themselves each to the other that they will not write or publish or cause to be written or published any matter or thing of and concerning the other which shall be disrespectful of the character of the other on any subject existing prior to the compromise."80 Innes, who lived seven months longer, seems to have lived up to his pledge. Humphrey Marshall did not. The second edition of his History of Kentucky, published in 1824, was sharply critical of his opponent. Marshall repeated the charges against Innes, including an accusation that he was "a weak and partial judge, an enemy to his government."81 Yet Harry Innes may have had the last word after all—for the records of the federal court in Kentucky reveal a man whose competence, conscientiousness, and devotion to due process made his court a respected institution in the life of his state. Perhaps not least among his achievements, he may even have reconciled his skeptical countrymen to the authority of a government "at a distance and out of sight."82 80 Copies of this agreement of Feb. 17, 1816 are in Innes Papers, Filson Club; Innes File, M S Coll., Kentucky Historical Society; and Innes Papers, Library of Congress, XXII, Pt. ii, 6-161. 81 Marshall, History of Kentucky, n, 452. 82 Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, No. 27.

53

CHAPTER THREE

The Personnel of the Courts courts in Kentucky from 1789 until 1816 were A identifiedtheinfederal the public mind most closely with Harry Innes, he LTHOUGH

was not alone in determining their destiny. During the twenty-seven years he sat as judge, twenty other men were appointed to serve with him in various capacities. By their service (and sometimes by their refusal to serve) these men, too, contributed to the history of those courts. The roster of judges, clerks, marshals, and federal attorneys includes men of prominence and others who have rarely been chronicled. Among them were Federalists and Republicans who had little in common beyond their Revolutionary War heritage and their appointments to the courts. For some that appointment defined their careers; for others it was a matter of little importance. Yet collectively these appointments furnish insight into the political as well as the legal history of the era, and show how this small part of the federal judiciary contributed to the history of Kentucky and of the nation. The three men of potentially greatest importance to the Kentucky federal courts were those who shared the bench with Innes: John McNairy, William McClung, and Thomas Todd. McNairy and McClung were appointed to serve during the brief tenure of the Federalist judiciary act, in 1801 and 1802. Todd was appointed in 1807 and remained on the court until his death in 1826. Innes had been the only federal judge in Kentucky for almost twelve years when the Judiciary Act of 1801 abolished the Kentucky District Court and reassigned him to the new Sixth Circuit Court, comprised of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Joining him on that bench were a newly appointed circuit judge and the district judge of Tennessee, whose district court also was abolished. This second man was John McNairy. He had little impact on the new court in Kentucky because he came to Frankfort only for the brief three-day term in May 1801, when no decisions were rendered. (He did not attend the two later terms in November 1801 and May 1802.) But if his fame in Kentucky is slight, McNairy ought to be remembered in Tennessee as a man who feuded with Andrew Jackson, but with whom Jackson declined to duel. McNairy and Jackson were once close friends who read law together in North Carolina. In the winter of 1787-1788 they set out for its 54

PERSONNEL OF THE COURTS

western Mero District, where they worked in the recently established state and federal territorial courts. 1 But McNairy became a supporter of Jackson's principal political opponent, Governor John Sevier. By 1797 they were sufficiently estranged that Jackson wrote McNairy and referred to their "once intimate friendship."2 Jackson also wrote to President Washington and recommended another man, as well as McNairy, for the expected federal district court. 3 McNairy felt that their earlier friendship had been compromised and wrote letters that Jackson might have construed as challenges. That he did not is perhaps more significant than if he had, considering Jackson's reputation as an almost indiscriminate dueler. Washington did appoint McNairy as judge of the Tennessee District Court. He served in that court until it was supplanted by the United States Court for the Sixth Circuit in Tennessee, and then again in the district court when it was reestablished in 1802. He and Jackson were eventually reconciled.4 McNairy became a substantial citizen of sufficient distinction (or political power) that when the part of Hardin County west of the Tennessee River was separated in 1823, the new county was named in his honor. He served thirty-seven years as a 1 McNairy was judge of the Superior Court of Law and Equity for the Mero district of North Carolina; Jackson was the district attorney. In 1790, McNairy was appointed judge of the United States Court for the Territory South of the River Ohio, which included the area later organized as Tennessee and the northern thirds of what would become the states of Mississippi and Alabama. McNairy was a member of the state constitutional convention, and when Tennessee gained statehood in 1796, was judge of its supreme court. J. Louis Adams, "Old Purdy," West Tennessee Historical Society, Papers, vi (1952), 5-33; "Hugh Lawson White, Frontiersman, Lawyer, and Judge," East Tennessee Historical Society, Publications, xix (1947), 3-25; Samuel C. Williams, "Moses Fisk," ibid., xx (1948), 16-36; Miriam L. Fink, "Judicial Activities in Early East Tennessee," ibid., VIi (1935), 38-50; A[lbigence] W[aldo] Putnam, History of Middle Tennessee, or Life and Times of Gen. James Robertson (Knoxville, Tenn., 1971 [orig. publ. 1859]), 533. The continuing importance of the Spanish in the West is shown by the name of the district: Estaban Miro was de Carondelet's predecessor as governor of Louisiana. Thomas P. Abernethy, The South in the New Nation, 1789-1819, in Wendell H. Stephenson and E[IHs] Merton Coulter, eds., A History of the South, iv (Baton Rouge, La., 1961), 49. 2 Andrew Jackson to John McNairy, May 12, 1797, John Spencer Bassett, ed., The Correspondence of Andrew Jackson (Washington, 1926), i, 37. 3 McNairy may not have known that Jackson also recommended him but qualified the recommendation with the comment that he was state judge. Andrew Jackson to the president [George Washington], Feb. 8, 1797, Miscellaneous Letters of the Department of State, 1789-1906, M-179, roll 15, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives. (Hereafter cited as Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179.) 4 Bassett, ed., Jackson Correspondence, i, 5-29; ibid., in, 205-209; ibid., vi, 417-422.

55

PERSONNEL OF THE COXJRTS

federal judge in Tennessee and resigned in 1834, four years before his death. 5 In 1801, when the Sixth Circuit Court replaced the district courts of Kentucky and Tennessee, McNairy and Innes were both experienced federal judges, and they were both Jeffersonians. They also shared the distinction of being the only two of the eighteen judges in the new circuit courts who were not elevated to circuit judgeships. William McClung, who was appointed circuit judge of the Sixth Circuit and was therefore nominally superior to Innes and McNairy, had no judicial experience. At the time, Innes stated flatly that McClung was not qualified. Innes considered him "void of candour," "a mere creature to party and faction," and a failure at the bar. 6 Thomas Todd thought that he added neither "talent, learning nor dignity to the bench."7 John Brown, the senior United States senator from Kentucky, vigorously opposed his appointment. 8 But the new circuit judge had two more pertinent qualifications: he was a Federalist and he was a brother-inlaw both of President Adams's influential advisor, Secretary of State and Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall, and of Kentucky's junior senator, Humphrey Marshall.9 McClung was born in Virginia in 1758, the son of a Scotswoman and an Irishman. According to the Marshall family's genealogist, the future circuit judge graduated from Washington College in 1785 and later studied law with Thomas Jefferson. After emigrating to Kentucky with his cousin Joseph McDowell (whose mother was a McClung), he was a member of the Kentucky Convention of 1787 and voted against separation from Virginia. He represented Kentucky in the Virginia legislature and joined the Danville Political Club. Around 1791 he settled near Bardstown. Two years later he married Susan Tarleton Marshall, the nineteen-year-old daughter of Colonel Thomas Marshall.10 He represented Nelson County in the Kentucky Senate from 1796 to 1800 but his political career appears not to have been particularly distinguished before his appointment as circuit judge in 1801. 5 Erwin C. Surrency, "Federal District Court Judges and the History of Their Courts," Federal Rules Decisions, XL (1966), 287. 6 Harry Innes to Thomas Jefferson, Feb. 10, 1801, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (microfilm), roll 37. 7 Thomas Todd to John Breckinridge, Feb. 17, 1802, Breckinridge Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, xxi, 3655. 8 "Extract of a letter from a member of Congress, to a Gentleman in this place, dated Washington, Feb. 26, 1801," Kentucky Gazette (Lexington), Mar. 30, 1801. Evidently the custom of senatorial courtesy in appointing federal judges had not been developed. 9 W[illiam] MfcClung] Paxton, The Marshall Family (Cincinnati, 1885), 72. 10 Ibid.; The Political Club, Danville, Kentucky, Records, 1786-1790, Manuscript Dept., Filson Club, Louisville, Ky.

56

PERSONNEL OF THE COtXRTS

Contrary to tradition, McClung did sit on the Sixth Circuit bench during each of the three terms of its existence.11 The Order Book of the court states that he was present almost every day. The court records do not reflect any major shift in philosophy or procedure during his tenure, although he was present during the peak of the internal revenue cases. One example may indicate something of the relationship between McClung and Innes. When the Sixth Circuit Court was established, it became customary for all the judges in attendance to sign each day's entries in the Order Book. On November 24, 1801, a new rule was announced that the "Proceedings shall be signed by the Judge presiding."12 From that time on, the Order Books were signed only by Judge Innes, who was technically the subordinate. When the Sixth Circuit Court and his judgeship were abolished by the Judiciary Act of 1802, McClung retired to pursue the life of a gentleman farmer. Some time after Christopher Greenup became governor in 1804, he appointed McClung to the Mason County Circuit Court. In 1811 he contracted a malignant fever while holding court at Augusta and died. The family genealogist reported that McClung "was distinguished for his high attainments as a lawyer, but most eminently for his unapproachable integrity as a judge."13 The source for this assessment was Collins's History of Kentucky. It may be pertinent to note that Judge McClung's son, the Reverend John A. McClung, "contributed largely to Collins's first edition."14 The fourth judge to sit on the federal bench in Kentucky was the state's first United States Supreme Court justice, Thomas Todd. Born in 1765 in King and Queen County, Virginia, he was the son of Richard Todd and the former Elizabeth Richards, whose sister Catherine had married the Reverend Robert Innes. Todd's father died when he was eighteen months old, and his older first cousin Harry Innes took charge of his education. After two short enlistments in the Continental Army between 1779 and 1781, Todd lived with the Innes family until he began his career as a lawyer. He tutored the Innes children, read law 11 Cf. Thomas Speed, History of the United States Courts in Kentucky (Louisville, 1896), 4. " United States Court for the Sixth Circuit, in District Court Order Book C, 140. (Hereafter cited as DC OB.) « Paxton, Marshall Family, 72. 14 Ibid., 171. John A. McClung wrote a major section in the original (1847) edition of Lewis Collins's History of Kentucky. It is reprinted as "Outline History" in Lewis Collins and Richard H. Collins, History of Kentucky (Louisville, Ky., 1924 [orig. publ. Louisville, 1874]), i, 247-328. The full description of Judge McClung states that he "was distinguished for his high attainments as a lawyer, but most eminently for his great unswerving and unapproachable integrity as a judge." Ibid., n, 576.

57

PERSONNEL OF T H E COURTS

with Innes, and studied surveying. When Innes emigrated to Kentucky, Todd remained with the family and accompanied them on their move 15 a year or so later. Once in Kentucky, Todd began a minor career as recorder for almost every official gathering in the state. He was clerk for each of the ten Kentucky conventions 1784-1792, clerk of the federal district court 1789-1792, clerk of the Kentucky Court of Appeals 1792-1801, clerk of the Kentucky constitutional conventions in 1792 and 1799, sometime clerk of the Kentucky House of Representatives, and in 1793 and 1794, clerk of the Lexington Democratic Society.10 He was also a dis­ appointed candidate for governor in 1796. With uncharacteristic bitterness, he later wrote to his son that he lost the election because "numbers will prevail against talent and respectability and the elec­ tioneering intriguer supplant and undermine the independent and honest statesman." 17 When a fourth seat was created for the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1801, Todd moved up to judge. After the resignation of George Muter five years later, Todd became chief judge. In 1807 President Jefferson named him to the United States Supreme Court. Todd was to have the newly established seventh seat and to serve in the new Seventh Circuit Court. The appointment of Todd was notable in two respects. The first is that since the new position on the Supreme Court was intended to give representation to the Ohio-Kentucky-Tennessee area, the president asked each member of Congress from those states to recommend two candidates. Todd is reported to have been on everyone's ballot, as either first or second choice. 18 The second important aspect of the appointment is that its timing indicated an expression of confidence not only in the appointee but 15

Standard biographical sources usually give the date of Todd's move to Ken­ tucky as 178Θ, but it must have been earlier because he was clerk of the first Kentucky convention in 1784. William EIsey Connelley and E[IHs] M[erton] Coulter, History of Kentucky, ed. Charles Kerr, ι (Chicago, 1922), 227; Edward C. O'Rear, "Justice Thomas Todd," Kentucky Historical Society Register, xxxvm (1940), 112-119. 10 Connelley and Coulter, History of Kentucky, i, 321; Lowell H. Harrison, John Breckinridge, Jeffersonian Republican (Louisville, 1969), 54, 105; Harry Innes Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, xvm, 2-166. Todd's assets included a notably legible handwriting, as can be seen in the federal court records. 17 Thomas Todd to Charles S. Todd, Feb. 10, 1816, Todd Family Papers, M S Dept., Filson Club. 18 Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, ι (Boston, 1926), 301.

58

PERSONNEL OF THE COURTS

also in Judge Innes. The winter of 1807 was the critical point in Innes's career because it followed the Sebastian and Burr affairs in Kentucky. Henry Clay, recently elected United States senator, reported from Washington that despite the administration's assumption of Burr's guilt, no censure had fallen on Innes for his part in letting Burr es­ 19 cape. And Buckner Thruston, the other senator from Kentucky, also wrote reassuringly: "Boyle . . . says the President is mostly inclined in favor of Colonel Todd, who will certainly meet our Support most cor­ dially; The President knows the Connexion between Todd and your­ self; this certainly argues that his Mind is not unfavorably impressed toward you, and ought to afford you some Consolation." 20 There proved to be nothing improper about appointing Innes's cousin and protege to share the new circuit bench. The circuit court never reviewed judgments of the district court. But the closeness of the relationship between the two men virtually guaranteed a continuation of the line of decision established by Innes and, apparently, approved by Jefferson. Innes, for example, had supported Kentucky's occupying claimant laws which protected the investment of small farmers from confiscation by larger and more powerful landholders. The president doubtless expected that Todd would continue to uphold Jeffersonian tenets in Kentucky, where the judicial branch was not dominated by Federalists. The close connection between Todd and Innes was marked by mu­ tual affection as well as a common agreement upon principles. Todd's first child was named Harry Innes Todd. Todd's letters to his sons as they grew up often suggested that they consult with their "Uncle Innes." 2 1 The family relationship was further reinforced the year after Innes's death, when the daughter of his second marriage, Maria Knox Innes, married Todd's third son, John Harris Todd. 2 2 The community of ideas shared by the judge and the justice is shown, also, in Todd's letters to Innes reporting on the Burr trial at Richmond in September 1807.23 Like his older cousin, Todd refused to 19

Henry Clay to Thomas Todd, Jan. 24, 1807, James F. Hopkins and Mary W.2 0 M. Hargreaves, The Papers of Henry Clay, ι (Lexington, Ky., 1959), 270. Buckner Thruston to Harry Innes, Feb. 18, 1807, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xix, 165. Thruston had been Innes's recommendation for the Sixth Circuit Court appointment given to McClung in 1801. Innes to Jefferson, Feb. 10, 1801, Jefferson Papers, roll 37. 2i Thomas Todd to Charles S. Todd, Aug. 23, 1808; Mar. 1, 1810; Feb. 17, 1811, Todd Family Papers, MS Dept., Filson Club. 22 Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xvm, 2-1Θ6. 23 Todd to Innes, Sept. 23, 1807, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xvm, 2-92; Sept. 27, 1807, ibid., 2-93. 59

PERSONNEL OF T H E COURTS

be pressured into abandoning due process for political expediency, or into loosely defining treason.24 The letters are particularly interesting because they describe Todd's own counterattack against Humphrey Marshall. Like Innes, Todd was in the process of suing the editor of the Western World for libel, and he gave Innes instructions for the trial. Todd was also trying to unearth evidence that Marshall was implicated in the Blount conspiracy, and that Marshall's son had been involved in Burr's "most diabolical" plans. 25 Yet there were important differences between Todd and Innes. Despite his Jeffersonianism, Todd accepted Chief Justice Marshall's view of judicial authority and of national supremacy. While eulogies are notoriously unreliable, there was probably truth in the one written by Mr. Justice Story on Todd's death in 1826: He was not ambitious of innovations upon the settled principles of the law, but was content with the more unostentatious character of walking in the trodden paths of jurisprudence. . . . He steadfastly supported the constitutional doctrines which Mr. Chief Justice Marshall promulgated in the name of the Court . . . although bred in a different school from that of the Chief Justice.2'1 Todd was also less prosperous than Innes. He was unusual in that boom-or-bust period of Kentucky history because he was a successful lawyer with training as a surveyor who did not make a fortune out of land speculation. He never parlayed his surveyor's skills and his political connections into landholdings large enough to make himself wealthy.27 One reason for his relative poverty may be that he lacked the initial investment capital: he is said to have begun his practice with thirty-seven-and-a-half cents, a horse, and a bridle. 28 He also seems to have found it more exciting to breed horses than to trade 24 Todd testified, however, that he doubted the validity of Burr's title to the Bastrop lands on the Ouachita River, where Burr claimed that he intended to establish a settlement. Thomas Perkins Abemethy, The Burr Conspiracy (New York, 1954), 257. See Chapter Six. 25 Todd to Innes, Sept. 23, 1807, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xvin, 2-92; Sept. 27, 1807, ibid., 2-93. 28 Thomas Todd file, Manuscript Collection, United States Supreme Court Library, Washington, D.C. 27 Willard Rouse Jillson, The Kentucky Land Grants (Louisville, 1925), reports that at one time Todd held five grants totaling 8,499 acres, not a large amount for the period. At least 1,000 acres derived from a grant made to veterans of the Virginia Continental Line. "Property Deed to John Fowler," Hopkins and Hargreaves, eds., Clay Tapers, i, 379. Todd's letters to his son suggest that some of his land was lost to Henry Clay in a lawsuit. Thomas Todd to Charles S. Todd, Jan. 2, 1816; Jan. 10, 1816, Todd Family Papers, MS Dept., Filson Club. 28 Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. "Todd, Thomas."

60

PERSONNEL OF THE COUBTS 29

land. Perhaps he was simply not greedy. In any case, as late as 1808, Todd was entirely dependent upon his salary. In admonishing his college-bound son to be frugal, he pointed out "how necessary it is to be prudent and economical and that upon an equal dividend of my Salary among a wife and five children, allowing $400 to each I shall have but a scanty sum to bear my expences in travelling to and attending the several Courts where official duty requires me."30 Todd and Innes did differ to some extent on matters affecting the federal court. As noted earlier, Todd apparently construed federal jurisdiction more narrowly: there were ninety causes dismissed "for want of jurisdiction" in the terms immediately following his appointment to the Seventh Circuit Court.31 No longer did the federal court accept debt cases involving small sums that had been brought by British merchants. 32 There were also eight causes certified to the Supreme Court from 1807 until 1816, "the judges being opposed." The most significant of these was Green v. Biddle, raising the question of the validity of the Kentucky occupying claimant laws. Finally, the use of advisory juries in chancery suits died out after Todd joined Innes on the bench. 33 In the Seventh Circuit Court, fewer cases were heard each day and each term than formerly; fewer decisions were handed down. Apparently it took more time for two judges to confer than for one to decide alone. Perhaps Todd was not so hard a worker as Innes, who had often demonstrated an astonishing output. It had not been unusual for Innes to hear more than thirty cases or conduct a dozen jury trials on the same day.34 Yet except for the Green v. Biddle case, which came at the end of the period under discussion, the essential line of decision was unchanged after 1807 and the style of the Kentucky federal courts remained as it had been for nearly twenty years. Innes had spent almost two decades establishing the character of the courts and had acted upon 1,595 cases before Todd joined the federal bench. Only a judge with a very different view of jurisprudence could have greatly changed the courts' direction. Consequently, the only judge in the Kentucky federal courts before 29

Clay to Todd, Jan. 24, 1807, Hopkins and Hargreaves, eds., Cfoy Papers, i, 272; "Advertisement Concerning Buzzard," Feb. 17, 1807, quoted ibid., 283; "Advertisement Concerning Buzzard," Mar. 7, 1808, quoted ibid., 322-324. 30 Thomas Todd to Charles S. Todd, Aug. 23, 1808, Todd Family Papers, Ms Dept., Filson Club. 31 See Chapter One and Appendix B. 32 These cases are discussed in Chapter Seven. 33 Occupying claimant laws and advisory juries are discussed in Chapter Eight. 34 E.g., DC OB F, July 18, 1806, 486-500; ibid., July 25, 1806, 509-519; DC OB G, July 31, 1806, 7-26.

61

PERSONNEL OF T H E COTJRTS

1816 who was on the bench long enough and was in a position strong enough to challenge and change the character of the court was a man most unlikely to do so. Thomas Todd was distinguished by his personal loyalties. Furthermore, he had learned his law from Innes and shared his political philosophy. Like most lawyers with a judicial tempera­ ment, Todd believed that stare decisis (let the decision stand) was the spine of the law. He strengthened the traditions and reinforced the individual character of the federal courts in Kentucky, and thereby contributed to its stability and prestige. 35 β

*

S

The Judiciary Act of 1789 provided, in addition to judges, three other officers for each federal court: marshals (who corresponded to sher­ iffs in English, colonial, and state courts), United States attorneys, and clerks. The clerks were more closely aligned with the judges than were the other officers of the court because they were appointed by the judges and served at their pleasure. In the Kentucky federal courts it is clear that personal and political allegiances were important in the selection process. The first clerk of the district court was Thomas Todd, appointed by Innes on the opening day of the first session.36 Todd resigned three years later to become clerk of the newly established Kentucky Court of Appeals, and for the next fifteen years his career developed in that court. James G. Hunter, a Danville lawyer, succeeded Todd as clerk. 37 Within a few months of his appointment, Hunter became an active member of the Democratic Society and sponsored the public state­ 38 ments it issued. Innes was well acquainted with Hunter through their 35 Compare the amount of public protest registered over the three instances during this era when Kentucky state courts reversed themselves on important questions. The first occasion was when, in Kenton v. McConnell (1794), a majority of the Court of Appeals declared that the decisions of the Virginia Land Commission of 1779-1780 could be overturned. ( T h e case was reargued in 1799 and reported in full for that year.) James Hughes, A Report of the Causes De­ termined by the Late Supreme Court for the District of Kentucky and by the Court of Appeals in Which Titles to Land Were In Dispute, 257-322. (ι Kentucky Reports.) The second came after Innes's death, when the occupying claimant laws were declared unconstitutional. The third was when state courts disallowed stay laws and replevin bonds and brought about the old court-new court battle of the 1820s.

36 D C O B A, D e c . 1 5 , 1 7 8 9 , 2. 37 Ibid., Dec. 18, 1792, 3 1 ; Maria T. Daviess, History of Mercer and Boyle Counties (Harrodsburg, Ky., 1924), 1-7. 38 " T h e Democratic Societies of 1793 and 1794 in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Virginia," William and Mary Quarterly, 2d Ser., n ( 1 9 2 2 ) , 247.

62

PERSONNEL O F T H E COURTS

common interest in the society, even though the judge was careful to keep his political sympathies out of the public eye. It is probable that his support of its purposes and members is reflected in Hunter's retaining the clerkship during the four most critical years of resistance to the internal revenue acts. The third clerk was Thomas Tunstall, who followed Hunter on March 15, 1796. Tunstall was an old acquaintance of the judge. (Innes's papers include a promissory note indicating that he borrowed money from Tunstall in 1776.)39 Tunstall, like Innes, shifted to the Sixth Circuit Court during its short life and returned to the district court when it was reestablished in 1802.40 At the May 1807 session of the Seventh Circuit Court he was named clerk pro tem of that court as well as the district court. Both appointments were discontinued the following term. 41 It is evident that the addition of Justice Todd to the circuit court influenced the choice of Tunstall's successor: this was John H. Hanna, the man who married Todd's daughter. Hanna was a Pennsylvania lawyer who came out to Kentucky to make his fortune, and was successful. He was described by a contemporary as "a fine clerk and a distinguished citizen . . . no man more trustworthy."42 His honesty and industry brought him many rewards. At one time or another he owned the stagecoach line running from Louisville to Lexington, a large part of the land upon which Frankfort was built, and part interest in a number of cotton, woolen, and flour mills. Hanna was clerk of the Kentucky federal courts for forty-four years and did not resign until 1851. During his tenure he also became a leading citizen of Frankfort —president of the Farmers' Bank, supporter of the Widows' and Orphans' Home, donor of the sanctuary of the Episcopal church, and a member of the group who built the bridge over the Kentucky River.43 «

*

»

The remaining officers of the court, the United States attorneys and the marshals, were presidential appointees. The former had indefinite tenure; the latter served for renewable four-year terms. Kentucky had only three marshals during the period 1789-1816. The first was Samuel 39

Innes Papers, Filson Club. « DC OB C, May 15, 1801, 51; Nov. 15, 1802, 316. 41 United States Circuit Court for the District of Kentucky, Order Book A, May 4, 1807, 3; Order Book B, Dec. 9, 1807, 64. (Hereafter cited as CC OB.) ^ Martin D. Hardin to Richard Rush, May 29, 1817, Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179, roll 37. 43 Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky of the Dead and Living Men of the Nineteenth Century (Cincinnati, 1878), 350.

63

PERSONNEL OF THE COURTS

McDowell, Jr., son of Judge McDowell of the old Kentucky District Court of Virginia. A member of a large Scots-Irish clan of vigorous Presbyterian and Federalist convictions, the younger McDowell pur­ sued the duties of his office with the assistance of many of his brothers, brothers-in-law, and cousins, whom he appointed as his deputies. A cousin of William McClung and the Marshall family, McDowell was appointed to a third four-year term despite a lukewarm letter of rec­ ommendation by Humphrey Marshall. 44 There is little question that his tenure was dependent upon his political affiliations.45 The second marshal, Joseph Crockett, was recommended to Presi­ dent Jefferson as "a decided Republican." 46 Born in Virginia in 1742, Crockett served in the Revolutionary War and was discharged as a colonel. He came to Kentucky in 1784 to locate military warrants. 4 7 He surveyed lands and roads in Kentucky, sometimes in the employ of Colonel Thomas Marshall, but eventually lost most of his own claims. As a member of the Virginia legislature from the Kentucky District, Crockett opposed precipitate separation from Virginia. Nevertheless, he was elected to the first Kentucky General Assembly from Fayette County. His term as marshal coincided with effective enforcement of the internal revenue laws and brought him the highest fees in the nation. He received $452.33, in addition to his salary of $200.48 Seven years later, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin decided to wind up the business still remaining from the repealed revenue acts by transferring the duties of the supervisors of the internal revenue to the federal marshals. 49 Crockett was confused by his directives and 44

Humphrey Marshall to John Adams, Nov. 20, 1799, Letters of Application and Recommendation During the Administration of John Adams, 1797-1801, M-406, roll 2, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives; Paxton, Marshall Family, 58-62. 45 Thomas Marshall Green, Historic Families of Kentucky (Baltimore, 1964 [orig. publ. Cincinnati, 1889]), 4; Otto A. Rothert, "Samuel McDowell's Letters to 4Andrew Reid," Fihon Club History Quarterly, xvi (1942), 172-186. 6 John Breckinridge to Thomas Jefferson, Feb. 16, 1801, Breckinridge Family Papers, xx, 3394. Breckinridge also recommended John Jouitt (Jouett) and Charles Wilkins, but with less enthusiasm. Breckinridge to Jefferson, Jan. 12, 1801, ibid., 3377; Breckinridge to Jefferson, Mar. 2, 1801, ibid., 3404. 47 Samuel W. Price, Biographical Sketch of Joseph Crockett (Louisville, 1909), 9-23. 48 Walter Lowrie and Walter S. Franklin, eds., American State Papers, Miscellaneous: Documents, Legisfotive and Executive of the Congress of the United States, ι (Washington, 1834), 303. 49 Albert Gallatin to Thomas Jefferson, Sept. 3, 1808, Internal Revenue Direct Tax, Correspondence 1807-1829, file 11713, General Records of the Department of the Treasury, Record Group 56, National Archives. (Hereafter cited as Internal Revenue Direct Tax Correspondence.)

64

PERSONNEL OF THE COXJRTS

charged the government for the salary due for taking on this responsi­ bility while Supervisor Morrison was still handling it. Gallatin sternly replied, "The account is returned, that you may make another, in which 50 that charge shall be omitted." Crockett eventually made the correc­ tion, but it took him a long time to do so. In 1811, Joseph Crockett was succeeded by his son Robert, and collections became more difficult. The younger Crockett was described as "a man of great energy and enterprise, but of an over sanguine temperament, and in consequence undertook more than he could ac­ complish." 51 He was continually getting involved in schemes that left him (and eventually his father) poorer than before. Except for a tour of duty in the War of 1812, Robert Crockett served as marshal until June 1817. In spite of whatever he may have accomplished in office, he failed to satisfy Treasury Department officials. As late as July 1816, they complained about partial accounts of five years' standing, "and these altogether deficient in the forms requisite for their settlement." 52 A decade later, Joseph Crockett detailed his son's abortive ventures in a will that, upon his death in 1829, bequeathed to his daughters "whatever estate I may be in possession of . . . or monies due me from my son, Robert Crockett, for debts paid by me as his Security or other­ wise." 53 A pension eventually arranged for Joseph Crockett may have permitted him to live out his remaining years in some dignity. 54 As for the Treasury Department, it finally ended its attempts to collect from Joseph Crockett in March 1823, with the notation that "he is dead and insolvent, ruined by his son." 55 He was not dead, but the money was uncollectable. •

*

β

The administrative problems of collection were minor in comparison with the difficulties of filling the remaining federal court position in 50

Albert Gallatin to Joseph Crockett, May 22, 1810, ibid. Price, Biographical Sketch, 40. 52 J. H. Smith to Robert Crockett, July 3, 1816, Internal Revenue Direct Tax Correspondence; J. H. Smith to Joseph Crockett, July 3, 1816, ibid. The problems encountered by the Treasury Department with the Crocketts were not at all unusual, according to records in the National Archives. 53 Price, Biographical Sketch, 84. 54 Henry Clay is said to have secured the pension by a private bill passed in Congress, but the published Clay papers contain no record of this. Cf. Price, Biographical Sketch, 11. 55 George M. Bibb to Samuel Pleasanton, Mar. 9, 1823, Solicitor of the Treas­ ury, Letters Received; United States Attorneys, Clerks of Courts, and Marshals, Kentucky 1804-1866, file 32092, Records of the Solicitor of the Treasury, Record Group 206, National Archives. 51

65

PERSONNEL OF THE COURTS

Kentucky, that of United States attorney. Eight appointments were offered in the first eleven years of the court and five were immediately declined. At first the difficulty may have been an illustration of President Washington's continuing problem of finding people willing to accept federal appointments. 50 Or it may have been a question of finding people with the proper qualifications, because the first appointee was overqualified, the second underqualified, and the third had the wrong political qualifications. But as time went on, it became increasingly evident that the most important reason the position was so hard to fill was that it carried with it duties no one wanted to perform. The principal duty of a United States attorney was to bring suits against persons who were believed to be in violation of the statutes of the new nation. Until the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the most controversial laws were the internal revenue measures. These statutes were exceedingly unpopular in Kentucky. They were so repugnant to most Kentuckians that enforcement proved to be impossible and, sometimes, even dangerous. The records of the Kentucky federal court, Judge Innes's opinions, Treasury Department accounts, and private correspondence reveal that there was a whiskey rebellion in this state, once believed to have been generally (if reluctantly) in compliance with the internal revenue laws. Pennsylvania, where opposition to federal authority took the dramatic form of the Whiskey Rebellion, was not alone. Resistance was equally widespread in Kentucky, but much of the evidence was covered up at the time and has remained hidden ever since in government archives.57 Many who knew better pretended that all was well there, while the population in fact engaged in massive civil disobedience and occasional violence.58 Yet because it was inexpedient to acknowledge 56

George Washington to Alexander Hamilton, Oct. 29, 1795, Harold C. Syrett et al., eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, xix, 356-358. 57 One of the most significant bodies of evidence is a collection of letters written by Colonel Thomas Marshall to Treasury officials describing the situation in Kentucky. These letters were discovered in 1954 among papers which had been removed from the Internal Revenue files at some unknown time in the past. The collection is correctly labeled "Whiskey Rebellion," and there are many references to affairs in Kentucky as well as in Pennsylvania. Whiskey Rebellion Papers, Record Group 58, Records of the Internal Revenue Service, National Archives. (Hereafter cited as Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives.) 58 Beginning in 1792, Hamilton was informed through the series of letters referred to in note 57, above, which were forwarded to him by Tench Coxe. E.g., Coxe to Hamilton, May 20, 1792, Syrett et al., eds., Hamilton Papers, xi, 405. Hamilton also knew, of course, that no whiskey tax money was forthcoming from Kentucky. Thomas Jefferson knew about the Kentucky situation because he was requested to forgive arrearages in order to obtain compliance, as described below.

66

PERSONNEL OF THE COUBTS

the unpopularity of Hamilton's fiscal program, the Washington ad­ ministration treated Pennsylvania as unique and singled it out for an 69 experiment in the use of force to uphold federal authority. Kentucky was protected from that experiment by its relative geographical isola­ tion and by the administration's fear of snapping the bonds that held it in the Union. Even if an army could have been raised, transported, and supplied over the mountains (all of which are doubtful), it might well have thrown the West into the eager arms of France or Spain. As late as 1797, a Spanish agent reported: There are only three motives that would impel them [the Kentuckians] to break the bonds uniting them to the other states, namely: 1. War with the French Republic; 2. Prohibition to navigate the Mississippi and settle in the territory of the King; 3. Inability to pay in silver the general taxes . . . or an attempt of the government to collect this sum by force. These are the main things that will de­ termine their course of action. 6 0 Kentucky has experienced many generations of antagonism toward revenue agents, but it is important to note that the resistance in the 1790s was not limited to a handful of mountain distillers. The popula­ tion was nearly unanimous, and opposition to the whiskey tax included Kentucky's most respected leaders. Like the Pennsylvanians, they were "distillers through necessity, not choice, that [they] may comprehend Edmund Randolph was told by George Nicholas, who was his brother-in-law, and by Senator John Brown, who gave him a copy of a letter from Kentucky which Randolph then passed on to Washington on Feb. 27, 1794, cited in note 78, below. The responses of the Washington administration are described in Chapters Two and Five. 59 The administration took the official position that resistance to the internal revenue acts ended after Washington's Proclamation of Sept. 15, 1792, except in Pennsylvania. (This proclamation was published without comment in the Ky. Gaz. for six successive weeks, beginning Nov. 24, 1792.) Of even greater interest in Kentucky must have been Washington's State of the Union Message of Nov. 19, 1794 (published in the Ky. Gaz., Jan. 3, 1795), which treated Pennsylvania as an isolated example. The pretense was continued by John Marshall in his biography of Washington, although Marshall knew from his own father the true situation in Kentucky. E.g., John Marshall, The Life of George Washington, Commander in Chief of the American Forces During the War Which Established the Independence of His Country and First President of the United States, π (New York, 1930 [orig. publ. Philadelphia, 1804]), 278-281, 402-415. 60 Unidentified agent to Sefior Don [sic] Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, Dec. 5, 1797. (Translated from the Spanish by the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department, March 13, 1934.) Letters Received by the Secretary of War, Unregistered Series 1789-1860, M-222, roll 1, Records of the Office of the Sec­ retary of War, Record Group 107, National Archives.

67

PERSONNEL OF THE COURTS 61

the greatest value on the smallest size and weight." They were prob­ ably unhappy about any form of taxation, although there is no evidence that they refused to pay the other excises of the era that were placed on such things as carriages and gold watches. But Kentuckians were angered when a distant government that seemed of little use to them placed a tax on their most exportable product. Only a few years earlier, many of them had rebelled against England in part because they be­ lieved that its legislature had unfairly taxed one part of the population without its consent. Time had not dulled their convictions. Nor had it brought much experience of gracefully accepting the will of the ma­ jority, or of sacrificing self-interest to national needs. The fragility of the new nation was clearly exposed when its statutes were ignored, and tax evasion was not only tolerated but also practiced by a large number of its citizens. Because the government remained committed to collection of the excise despite petitions and protests, and force was out of the question, compliance could be achieved only through reliance on the peaceful processes of the legal system. It was the duty of United States attorneys to prosecute violators of federal laws. After passage of the internal revenue acts, it would have required someone with both courage and stature to undertake successfully such an assignment in Kentucky. And no one with those characteristics wanted the job. George Nicholas, who was Washington's first choice for the post, was such a man. A member of the wealthy land-holding Carter family of Virginia, Nicholas ended his Revolutionary War service as a colonel and later achieved fame for his support of the 1784 struggle for re­ ligious freedom in Virginia and his eloquent defense of the federal Constitution in the 1788 state convention. He was a noted lawyer and legal scholar who held the first chair of law at Transylvania Univer­ sity.62 Nicholas would have been an appropriate choice for judge of the federal court, but that position had been given to his friend Harry Innes, who often consulted him on matters of law and politics. 63 When Nicholas was offered the position as United States attorney in 1789 he 61

The quotation is from a 1792 petition written by Albert Gallatin. Henry Adams, ed., The Writings of Albert Gallatin, ι (New York, 1960 [orig. publ. Philadelphia, 1879]), 3. 62 Matilda Nicholas Barrett, "George Nicholas, a Biographical Sketch" [1887], Bennett Young Collection, MS Dept., Filson Club. 63 Among Innes's papers is a manuscript in Edmund Pendleton's handwriting describing Virginia land laws, especially the proper use of caveats. The manu­ script has marginal notes in Nicholas's and Innes's handwritings. Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xxv, Pt. i, 5-254. Their joint decision not to report the 1797 Spanish offer was described in Chapter Two.

68

PERSONNEL OF THE COURTS

was probably not interested in this less prestigious appointment be­ cause he had extensive land claims and a large legal practice requiring 64 his attention. James Brown, the twenty-four-year-old brother of Senator John 5 Brown, was appointed in March 1790." (The elder Brown probably arranged this appointment, as he had those of Innes and Nicholas.) James Brown had only recently moved to Lexington to practice law, after completing his education at William and Mary College. An able and ambitious young man who became secretary of state under Ken­ tucky's first governor, Isaac Shelby, Brown later had a notable career in Louisiana as co-author of the Civil Code, secretary of the Territory, district attorney, and United States senator. 60 But in 1790 his career was just beginning, and he probably declined the opportunity to be United States attorney because he recognized his own inexperience, and because there was no salary and he could collect only the fees taxed by the court. 67 The office was eventually filled by William Murray, a member of the Lexington bar, who presented his commission as attorney to the court when it convened in September 1791. 68 But six months before that, Congress had passed the first of the internal revenue acts, and Murray, who later helped organize the Democratic Society, clearly had no in­ tention of trying to enforce them. 6 9 Colonel Thomas Marshall, the high­ est officer of the Internal Revenue Service in Kentucky, proceeded to 64 George Nicholas to John Brown, Nov. 12, 1789, George Nicholas file, Ken­ tucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Ky. Nicholas's notes on land cases tried in the Kentucky Court of Appeals were so complete that they were used by James Hughes and Thomas Todd when they prepared Vol. ι of Kentucky Reports. ι Kentucky Reports, vi. 65 Thomas Jefferson to James Brown, Apr. 7, 1790, Domestic Letters of the Department of State, 1784-1906, M-40, roll 4, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives. (Hereafter cited as Domestic Let­ ters, Dept. of State, M-40.) 66 Samuel M. Wilson, "The Early Bar of Fayette County," in Addresses Deliv­ ered in Honor of John Marshall Day by Members of the Fayette County Bar (Lexington, Ky., 1901), 50. Brown married wealthy Ann (Nancy) Hart, sister of Henry Clay's wife, and in the 1820s was United States minister to France. Hopkins and Hargreaves, eds., Clay Papers, i, 150n. 67 1 Stat. 73, sec. 35. The official appointment of William Murray, dated Feb. 27, 1791, notes the resignation (not refusal) of Brown, but there is no evidence in the district court records that he ever took the oath of office or performed any official duties, although he was admitted to practice in April 1790. Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179, roll 5; DC OB A, Apr. 1, 1790, 1. 68 DC OB A, Sept. 20, 1791, 10. There is no explanation for Murray's absence from the June term. 69 "The Democratic Societies," WMQ, 2d Ser., π (1922), 239; Wilson, "Early Bar of Fayette County," 51.

69

PERSONNEL OF THE COtTRTS

organize the district and appointed collectors, but he got no cooperation from the United States attorney in prosecuting violators of the law. Except for taking the oath of office and collecting allowances for attending court, Murray seemed to have no public duties.70 He never asked for indictments from the grand juries and never prosecuted any suits, either civil or criminal, in the name of the United States. In December 1792 he resigned to become attorney general of Kentucky, and once again the office of United States attorney was vacant. 71 In February 1793 the president turned again to George Nicholas. By this time, Commissioner of Internal Revenue Tench Coxe had offered a compromise to distillers in order to achieve compliance with the law. Taxes were to be excused for the first year, from July 1, 1791 until July 1, 1792. This was not enough for Nicholas, who refused his second appointment. He defended his position in a letter to Colonel Marshall: I have encouraged no man to oppose the law; I have recommended it to all who have applied to me for that Purpose, to comply with it; I have refused to give instructions how the distillers might evade the law; I have declined giving any general opinion on the Practicability of enforcing the law; but after suits have been brought, I have upon being employed in them, given an opinion as to the decision that would Probably take place in those Particular cases. In all future applications, except where the defendants shall have been guilty of a clear breach of the Peace, I shall hold myself at liberty to appear for them, and to endeavor to show that their cases do not come within the law, or ought not to be punished under it.72 Nicholas did cooperate enough to recommend Thomas T. Davis for the office, but Marshall thought him a poor suggestion. "His character as a man of genious and information I have never heard mentioned but in very moderate terms. I have no great hopes from this Gentlemans assistance. He can be no match for Colo Nicholas at the bar."73 Meanwhile, the president had made a different selection in Novem™ DC OB A, Sept. 20, 1791, 13; Jan. 12, 1792, 18; Mar. 20, 1792, 26. 71 William Murray to Jefferson, Dec. 7, 1792, Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179, roll 8. 72 Nicholas to Marshall, Aug. 25, 1793, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. 73 Marshall to Edward Carrington (supervisor of the revenue in Virginia), Mar. 20, 1794, ibid. Davis, a Jeffersonian and friend of Innes, was not appointed. Davis later served in Congress and as a judge of the Indiana territorial court. An application by him for a writ of habeas corpus, denied by Innes, is described in Chapter Seven.

70

PERSONNEL OF THE COURTS

ber. This time he chose John Breckinridge, a Virginia lawyer who had moved to Kentucky earlier in the year.74 The new nominee, however, had already accepted appointment as attorney general of Kentucky. In January he declined the federal post without explanation.75 Colonel Marshall believed that he knew the reason: No Federal Atto. as yet undertakes to act in this Country, it is no more than I have for some time foreseen, I suspect it to be a part of the plan of those who wish to defeat the law; men of Character and known abilities are recommended, but whose principles and Connections are known to be adverse to the Law, from which it necessarily follows that they will refuse the appointment. 70 The colonel may have been mistaken in suspecting conspiracy but he was correct in his assessment of the "principles and connections" of Breckinridge, Nicholas, Brown, and Murray. At the very time that he was appointed, Breckinridge was chairman of the Democratic Society and was writing "A Remonstrance of the Citizens West of the Mountains to the President and Congress of the United States." The document vigorously criticized the government for its failure to secure the free navigation of the Mississippi River and candidly stated that the people of the interior were not willing to share the burdens of government while they did not share its benefits. Breckinridge was a most unlikely person to wish to serve as attorney. He was a Jeffersonian who would gain fame for introducing Jefferson's resolutions against the Alien and Sedition Acts to the 1798 Kentucky legislature. He later became a senator, and was appointed attorney general of the United States just before his death in 1806. Few positions could have been less tempting in 1794 than the assignment of prosecuting Kentuckians under an unpopular federal law that was leading to violence in Kentucky as in Pennsylvania. Colonel Marshall had already experienced many problems in trying to retain collectors, because they were so often intimidated by the population. In February 1794 there was a particularly brazen nighttime attack upon a collector whose money, saddlebags, and records were stolen. The money and saddlebags were later found, but the records were not. Marshall, despairing of a federal prosecution, sug74

Harrison, John Breckinridge, 40. Breckinridge to the secretary of state [Edmund Randolph], Jan. 13, 1794, Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179, roll 11. 76 Marshall to Carrington, Mar. 20, 1794, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. Marshall also complained to Tench Coxe, commissioner of internal revenue, on the same date. Ibid. 75

71

PERSONNEL OF THE COURTS

gested that the suspected assailants be charged in "Bourbon [state circuit] Court, where my son Alexander is States atto[rney] who I know will do his duty."77 The suggestion that members of the Marshall family might cooperate where others had not may have been passed on to President Washington. In any event, the next appointment went to Marshall's son-in-law, William McClung, in June. But Federalist McClung was no more interested in the position than the Republicans had been. Edmund Randolph wrote to the president: "William McClung has refused to accept his Commission, as Attorney for the district of Kentucky. I suspect, that we must see some turn in the minds of the people there, before anybody will venture upon an office, which will be chiefly conversant in the excise penalties."78 With no federal attorney in Kentucky, Hamilton advised Commissioner of Revenue Tench Coxe to hire private counsel to prosecute suits there. The instructions went out to Marshall, who replied to Coxe, "You tell me that I may call in the assistance of any other attorney. This you may depend sir is not attainable." 79 Nevertheless, the colonel again asked George Nicholas and promised him "liberal fees."80 But Nicholas still refused.81 It was not until 1796 that Marshall could at last write that William Clarke, who had recently come to Kentucky from Maryland, would accept the office of attorney if it were offered to him. Commissioner Coxe was advised that "it will perhaps be neces77

Marshall to Carrington, Mar. 20, 1794, ibid. Randolph to Washington, Oct. 22, 1794, Domestic Letters, Dept. of State, M-40, roll 7. (The same letter is in Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179, roll 12.) John Brown had sent Randolph a letter stating that "no lawyer who has a reputation to loose will accept that Office. Perhaps Hfumphrey] Marshall or [William] McClung—but what would be the consequence? They are fully as odious to the People as the Excise, and would probably be mobb'd if the[y] attempted to discharge the functions of that Office." Randolph passed this on to Washington, Feb. 27, 1794, ibid., roll 11. It is an interesting commentary on the appointment policies of President John Adams that McClung's refusal of this obligation in 1794 was no bar to his acceptability as a midnight appointment for circuit judge in 1801. 79 Marshall to Coxe, May 29, 1794, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. 80 Marshall to Nicholas, Oct. 8, 1794, ibid. 81 Humphrey Marshall later contended that Nicholas had agreed in 1796 to accept appointment as district attorney for a limited time, a fact that Nicholas vigorously disputed. Oliver Wolcott's recollection was like Marshall's, but Wolcott could not produce the evidentiary letter which Marshall wanted in order to embarrass Nicholas. Humphrey Marshall to Oliver Wolcott, Jr., Sept. 24, 1798, Oliver Wolcott, Jr., Papers, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, x, 41; Wolcott to Marshall, Oct. 20, 1798, ibid., xxxv, 75. 78

72

PERSONNEL OF THE COURTS

sary to furnish him with a Copy of the Acts of Congress which I believe cannot be had here."82 Armed with a copy of the statutes and an interim appointment, William Clarke presented his commission to the court at its December 1796 term. 83 Little is known about him before that date, but over the next four years he was to make a noticeable impression in Kentucky.84 No longer were the internal revenue laws ignored: Clarke brought 55 criminal charges and 176 civil suits in his determined effort to get compliance. But an outsider had little chance against the equally determined population. And Clarke was evidently not as skillful as his adversaries. It was hard to get indictments, harder still to get convictions, and even the civil suits ran afoul of legal technicalities upheld by Judge Innes. 85 In the end, not one of Clarke's defendants paid the full penalties or debts provided by the laws. Fortunately for Clarke, his tenure coincided with an era of peace with the Indians and the promise of free navigation of the Mississippi by the Spanish, or he might have precipitated the secession of Kentucky or violence to himself.86 His bumbling efforts earned the contempt of the judge, censure from the Treasury Department, and, eventually, the embarrassment of his earlier supporters. By 1800 such an impasse had been reached that the Marshalls arranged to have Clarke kicked upstairs to become chief judge of the newly created court of Indiana Territory.87 He left Kentucky a year before his successor took office and went to Vincennes, where he opened a general store, held court, and died of pleurisy in 1802.88 82

Marshall to Coxe, Aug. 14, 1796, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. 83 DC OB A, Dec. 20, 1796, 136. The Sept. 24 appointment was confirmed Dec. 22, 1796. John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799, xxxv, 241n. 84 Clarke was evidently suggested by Attorney General Charles Lee, among others. Washington to the secretary of state [Timothy Pickering], Oct. 10, 1796, Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of Washington, xxxv, 241. Apparently members of the Marshall family were also involved in the appointment. Marshall to Coxe, Aug. 14, 1796, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. On Clarke, see "Hopewell Rogers Index," n.p., n.d. (typescript), Filson Club. 85 These cases are described in Chapter Five. 86 The Treaty of Greenville with the Indians was concluded in August 1795; the Treaty of San Lorenzo with Spain was signed in October 1795. 87 The secretary of state [John Marshall] to the president [John Adams], Aug. 26, 1800, Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, vn, The Territory of Indiana 1800-1810 (Washington, D.C., 1939), 18. See, also, Clarence E. Carter, "William Clarke, First Chief Justice of Indiana Territory," Indiana Magazine of History, xxxiv (1938), 1-13. 88 Judge [Henry] Vanderburgh to the secretary of state [James Madison], Nov. 15, 1802, Carter, ed., Territorial Papers, vn, Indiana, 78.

73

PERSONNEL O F T H E COURTS

It was Joseph Hamilton Daveiss who finally ended the resistance of Kentuckians to the revenue laws—on the eve of their repeal. Daveiss was a fervent Federalist who had adopted his middle name in honor of Alexander Hamilton, whom he extravagantly admired. He was also a protege of the Marshalls and would soon become, by marriage, a member of the family.89 Daveiss's Scots-Irish parents brought him to Kentucky from Virginia in 1779, when he was five years old. At eighteen he served under Major John Adair guarding the transportation of provisions to forts north of the Ohio River.'"' He later studied law under George Nicholas and began to practice in 1795. When Humphrey Marshall arranged the appointment as United States attorney, Daveiss was serving as a representative from Mercer County in the Kentucky General Assembly.91 Although Daveiss's commission was dated December 1800, he did not present it to the court until its November 1801 term. During that year he won a major case in the United States Supreme Court, which brought him huge landholdings in the Green River country.92 He may also have worked out some kind of arrangement between the new administration of Thomas Jefferson and the Jeffersonians in Kentucky, because it is obvious from the Kentucky federal court records that a new day had dawned. Daveiss was a vigorous and competent prosecutor, and the docket was immediately flooded with cases. In cooperation with James Morrison, who had succeeded Colonel Marshall as inspector of the revenue in 1797, Daveiss brought 317 civil suits for Debt (owed by distillers who had failed to pay taxes), 161 of these in his first term in office.93 After repeal of the internal revenue laws in 1802, Daveiss tenaciously pursued delinquent collectors, customs authorities, postmasters, and army contractors. In all of these actions, he enjoyed a notable degree of success. Daveiss also prosecuted twenty-eight other criminal actions. Here, however, his conviction rate was much lower for a variety of reasons, many of which related to Judge Innes's strict adherence to due process.94 Throughout Daveiss's tenure, he and the judge were continually on the verge of political warfare outside the courtroom. Daveiss was close89

Daveiss married Nancy Marshall in 1803. Daviess, History of Mercer and Boyle Counties, 52. In the Burr affair in 1806, Daveiss subpoenaed Adair in order to forestall the dismissal of the second grand jury. The case is described in Chapter Six. 91 Humphrey Marshall to Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, Nov. 24, 1800, Joseph Hamilton Daveiss and Samuel Daveiss Papers, M S Dept., Filson Club. 92 Wilson v. Mason, 1 Cranch 45 (1801), is described in Chapter Eight. 93 94 See Chapter Five. See Chapter Six. 90

74

PERSONNEL OF THE COURTS

Iy associated with Humphrey Marshall, and the two arranged financing for a newspaper, the Western World, in order to give public expression to their Federalist convictions. It was this paper that revived the charges of a Spanish conspiracy against Judge Sebastian and Judge Innes and their associates in 1806. The climax of Daveiss's career came in November of that year, when he tried to get an indictment against Aaron Burr. Innes, who probably doubted Daveiss's intentions more than Burr's innocence, believed that there was no legal way to bring Burr to trial within the traditions of due process. After a year of sending warnings to President Jefferson about Burr's activities in Kentucky and preparing the case, Daveiss was bitterly and publicly critical both of the president and of the judge. The attorney's intemperance led to his dismissal in March 1807.05 He returned to his law practice and wrote memoirs detailing his grievances. In 1811, he obtained a commission as major under William Henry Harrison when hostilities against the Indians were resumed. Whatever antagonisms the former attorney may have generated by his energetic prosecutions, they were apparently forgiven by his death at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Grateful Kentuckians named Daviess County in his honor four years later.96 The next attorney for the United States was George M. Bibb. Born in Virginia, he attended Hampden-Sidney and William and Mary Colleges and moved to Kentucky in 1798.97 Bibb was a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives when he was appointed attorney. He held this position only a year before resigning in March 1808 to become a judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals. He later had a successful career as United States senator, chief judge of the Court of Appeals, chancellor of the Louisville Chancery Court, and secretary of the Treasury under President Tyler. He also published four volumes of Kentucky Reports. The United States attorney with the longest tenure in the period covered by this study was Robert M. Wickliffe, who served from 1808 until 1819. Wickliffe was born in Pennsylvania in 1775, while his parents were traveling from Virginia to Kentucky.98 He was another of George Nicholas's law students, and was practicing in Lexington at the time of his appointment. After his resignation, he was a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, and from 1825 until 1833, 95

See Chapter Six. Wilson, "Early Bar of Fayette County," 49. Note the reversal of the letters "ie" in the spelling of Daviess County. 9 ^ Ibid., 53. 98 Biographical Encydopedia of Kentucky, 66. 96

75

PERSONNEL OF THE COURTS

of the Kentucky Senate. Wickliffe had a long and important political career as a member of the "Bardstown faction" before his death in 1859. He was also said to have "probably accumulated a larger fortune than any of his contemporaries," a notable distinction in that era of land speculation and legal maneuvering.0!) By 1816, twenty-one men had been appointed to the federal court in Kentucky. Probably they, like other Americans, were proud that they lived under a government of laws. But none of the veterans of that generation would have contended that laws operated automatically. It seems peculiarly fitting that it was a former attorney of the court, George Bibb, who wrote, "The Constitution is on paper, and men are the agents by whom its action on the people is to be given and regulated."100 He might as accurately have stated that statutes are on paper, and men are the agents by whom they are enforced. Certainly anyone who had witnessed the earlier difficulties of filling his office appreciated the importance of the human element in the functioning of law. And many Kentuckians must have recognized that the character of their federal court was determined in large measure by the stature and convictions of those who served it—and, during one critical period, of those who refused to serve, as well. 99

Ibid. George M. Bibb, Reports of Cases at Common Law and In Chancery Argued and Decided in the Court of Appeals of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Fall Term 1808, to Spring and Fall Terms 1809 (3d ed., Louisville, 1904), 4. (iv Kentucky Reports.) 100

76

CHAPTER

FOUR

The Procedures of the Courts AS the structure and jurisdiction of the federal courts in Kentucky x x w e r e defined in federal statutes, and the reputation and profession­ alism of their officers may be deduced from biographical information, so the style and character of those courts may be seen by examining the procedures followed throughout their first generation. The most distinctive aspect of these procedures was their rigorous adherence to the antiquated technicalities of English law. The writs, the forms of action, the pleadings, and the judgments were all consistent with tra­ ditional English practice. It is clear from their records that the Ken­ tucky federal courts were very conservative. They made no apparent compromise with tradition, no progress toward the flexibility of modern legal practice. Their caseload reflected their era, but their procedures reflected the past. What went on in the Kentucky federal courts was, therefore, mark­ edly different from what usually has been thought typical of the period. For many years American legal history has been dominated by the assumption that American law and legal practice in the postrevolutionary era was intensely and consciously Anglophobic. For example, it has been said that "political conditions after independence had brought about a general distrust of English law, which was prolonged by the rise of Jeffersonian democracy at the beginning of the nine­ teenth century." 1 Yet there is no evidence of this distrust in the Ken­ tucky federal courts between 1789 and 1816. Nor do the records bear out the statement by another observer that "the Revolution engendered widespread hostility toward everything English, especially the com­ mon law."2 Similarly, it has been thought that until the second decade of the nineteenth century "ignorance of the English equity system was the rule." 3 But a large number of the private suits in the court of Harry 1 Roscoe Pound, "A Hundred Years of American Law," in Law: A Century of Progress, 1835-1935 (New York, 1937), i, 14. 2 Richard E. Ellis, The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic ( N e w York, 1971), 112. See also Max Radin, " T h e Rivalry of Common Law and Civil Law Ideas in the American Colonies," in Law: A Century of Prog­ ress, π, 428; Morton J. Horwitz, " T h e Emergence of an Instrumental Conception of American Law, 1780-1820," in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds., Law in American History, Perspectives in American History, ν (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 292. 3 William F. Walsh, " T h e Growing Function of Equity in the Development of the Law," in Law: A Century of Progress, i, 153. James Kent and Joseph Story are

77

PROCEDUEES OF THE COtIBTS

Innes were equity cases and they were managed with careful attention to the forms and practices of English equity courts. Evidence compiled by historians who have worked in court records and lawyers' papers challenges these assertions of unenlightened legal Anglophobia, but has received less public attention. Yet this increasing body of data points to an opposite conclusion: that the animosity felt toward the English political and imperial connection was not extended to the English legal system. From the established settlements of Massa­ chusetts, New York, and Virginia, to the frontiers of the Indiana and Michigan Territories, it was English law and legal forms that defined American jurisprudence. 4 There may well have been widespread im­ patience with the technicalities that often made justice expensive and inaccessible, and certainly there were scattered incidents of local re­ sistance to the courts. 5 But the fathers and sons of the American Revo­ lution concentrated on trying to make the old system more responsive, instead of destroying it or creating a more rational system to supersede it, as their counterparts in Napoleonic France did during these years. 6 generally believed to have been the progenitors of equity in the United States. But see Stanley N. Katz, "The Politics of Law in Colonial America: Controversies over Chancery Courts and Equity Law in the Eighteenth Century," in Fleming and Bailyn, eds., Law in American History, 257-285. 4 William Wirt Blume, "Civil Procedure on the American Frontier: A Study of the Records of a Court of Common Pleas of the Northwest and Indiana Territories (1796-1805)," Michigan Law Review, LVI (1957), 161-224; William Wirt Blume, ed., Transactions of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Michigan 1805-1814 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1935); Elizabeth Gaspar Brown, British Statutes in American Law 1776-1836 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1964); Elizabeth Gaspar Brown, "Frontier Justice: Wayne County 1796-1836," American Journal of Legal History, xvi (1972), 126-153; Francis S. Philbrick, "Law, Courts, and Litigation of Indiana Territory, 1800-1809," Illinois Law Review, xxiv (1929), 1-19, 193-219; L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel, The Legal Papers of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); Julius Goebel, Jr., et al., eds., The Law Practice of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1964-69); Julius Goebel, Jr., Antecedents and Beginnings to 1800, in Paul A. Freund, ed., The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court, ι (New York, 1971); Herbert A. Johnson et al., eds., The Papers of John Marshall, ι (Chapel Hill, N.C, 1974); William E. Nelson, Americanization of the Common Law; The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760-1830 (Cambridge, Mass., 1975). 5 Nelson, Americanization of the Common Law, 5, 67-72. 6 Common law was, of course, superseded by English, colonial, state, and federal statutes, all of which had the effect of "amending" English law. But passage of such statutes was more indicative of the general acceptance of the binding quality of English judicial decisions than of legal Anglophobia. However, anti-British atti­ tudes probably were responsible for passage of a widely cited Kentucky statute of 1808 that purported to nullify post-1776 English statutes and decisions. The impact of this Kentucky action on state law is analyzed in Brown, British Statutes, 130-135. Lewis N. Dembitz stated that it was ignored in the Kentucky federal

78

PROCEDURES OF THE COURTS

Modern historians often share the impatience with technicalities because the formal rhetoi'ic and classical pleadings of English law tended to prolong the proceedings, obscure the results, and lend an air of incomprehensible unreality to actual cases and controversies. Yet because American law is derivative, it is necessary to understand traditional English legal practice at least in general terms. At the time the American Constitution was written and the Kentucky courts established, English civil law was divided into fairly separate systems: law and equity, each practiced in different courts. The older, common law, was relatively inflexible, but its procedures had to be followed first if they applied to the circumstances at hand. In the (common) law courts, an aggrieved person, on advice of counsel, chose one of a number of specific forms of action by which he might gain redress of his grievance. For example, if the aggrieved was owed a fixed sum of money, he could choose an action of debt; if he was injured by a broken contract under seal, he could choose an action of covenant; if his injury was the indirect consequence of another's action, he could choose case (formally titled trespass on the case). Each form of action had its distinguishing writs, formal pleadings, admissible evidence, and potential judgment. After choosing the form of action, the aggrieved then applied to a chancellor or one of his subordinates for the appropriate writ (there were approximately three hundred available) and made a declaration of his grievance according to a prescribed formula. In England, a writ was a written order issued on behalf of the crown. Writs were directed to a sheriff and instructed him to perform some particular duty, such as to inform the defendant of the nature of the charge against him, to require the defendant to satisfy the grievant, or to bring him into court to explain if he did not satisfy the aggrieved. Writs did not act directly upon the accused. But the issuance of an initial writ marked the beginning of a series of highly developed traditional procedures by which wrongs could be redressed under the jurisdiction of the appropriate law court. These courts then received pleadings from the lawyers. The classical pleadings were intricate verbal formulae repeated letter-perfect, each in proper order, and exchanged between parties until a crucial point of factual dispute had been isolated. The "issue" was then "joined," and the matter came to trial. At the trial, the judge determined the law courts. Lewis N. Dembitz, Kentucky Jurisprudence (Louisville, Ky., 1890), 7. See also Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law (New York, 1973), 95100.

79

PROCEDUBES O F THE COURTS

(proper procedures, admissibility of evidence, relevant precedents, and applicable statutes), disinterested witnesses gave oral testimony, and a jury tried the facts. In suits at common law, "twelve good men and true, sworn well and truly to try the issue joined," decided whether the plaintiff or the defendant was correct on the factual issue in question. After they had reached their decision, the judge then announced how the law applied to it; in other words, the judge pronounced the judgment of the court. If a plaintiff or his counsel had chosen the wrong form of action to achieve the redress he wanted (i.e., applied for the wrong writ), or departed from the established rhetoric in his pleadings, or if there existed no writ to cover his particular circumstance, his case was at least temporarily lost. He might pursue it through another form of action or different writs, if these existed to meet his needs. But if there were none that applied, the aggrieved had no remedy at law, although he might in equity. The common law courts acknowledged no deviation from tradition: the phrase "no writ, no right" expresses their rigidity and the limitations on their jurisdiction. Courts of chancery developed in England under the chancellor, who was the keeper of the king's conscience. The purpose of these courts was to provide equity (fairness) in situations that were not covered by law, or that could not be decided fairly under law. After exhausting the possibilities of remedy at law, the petitioner (now called the complainant) could apply to the equity (chancery) courts for relief. Over the centuries chancery courts also developed an established set of procedures and decisions, but they remained distinguishable from the law courts in several ways. Chancery courts required evidence in writing instead of oral testimony, and they acted directly upon the individuals concerned. Juries were not used to find the facts, and equity judges (chancellors) could tailor decisions to fit the peculiar circumstances of an individual case. Awards could be made to both litigants, in differing amounts; such a balancing of interests was not possible in law. Chancery courts were more flexible, although by the end of the eighteenth century, not necessarily speedier than the law courts. The most obvious difference between the American and the English court systems was a structural one: in the United States, each federal court heard both law and equity cases, instead of one or the other as in England. For although they acknowledged the distinction between law and equity, the Founding Fathers did not establish separate federal courts to exercise the different jurisdictions. Article in, section 2, simply stated that "the [federal] judicial Power shall extend to all 80

PROCEDXJKES O F T H E C O U R T S

Cases, in Law and Equity. . . ." Congress might have set up separate inferior courts of law and of equity in the Judiciary Act of 1789, but did not. Two years later, the Seventh Amendment was ratified. Its guarantee of the right of jury trial in law cases involving more than twenty dollars required some separation of the caseload in federal courts, but their unitary structure was retained. Originally, this unusual but not unique combining of law and equity within each federal court probably reflected both frugality and the expectation that the lower federal courts would have a small caseload. 7 Edmund Pendleton, at least, believed that Congress had created "a blended jurisdiction" be­ cause "it no doubt was Oeconomical as otherwise a Chancellor for each state must have been appointed, with perhaps little to do." 8 Pendleton preferred separate courts and expected that future Con­ gresses might establish them. This has never been done, although well into the twentieth century, federal courts had a "law side" and an "equity side." From their inception, therefore, all federal courts entertained cases brought under two different kinds of law. It is probable that (as in Kentucky) different procedures were adopted for each kind. Except for the early years when there was little business in his court, Judge Innes arranged the docket to separate the law cases from the equity cases, and they were often heard on different days. As required by sec­ tion 16 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 (and by English tradition), no suit in equity could be sustained if a remedy lay at law, and actions at law had to be completed before any related equity matters could be ex7 Some state courts heard both law cases and equity suits. In Virginia, at least, problems resulted from this circumstance. E.g., Edmund Pendleton to Harry Innes, Nov. 9, 1791, David John Mays, ed., The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendle­ ton, π (Charlottesville, Va., 1967), 581. The rather surprising departure from tradition in establishing a blended jurisdiction in the federal courts seems never to have been questioned, although other aspects of the intentions of the Framers and the Ellsworth committee have been scrupulously examined. See, for example, Charles Warren, "New Light on the History of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789," Harvard Law Review, xxxvn (1923), 49-132; Goebel, Antecedents and Begin­ nings, 457-508. The mistrust of equity these authors describe derived from two related factors: the absence of the right of trial by jury in chancery courts, and the power that English chancellors had because their authority was limited neither by precedent nor by juries. However, it seems likely that, as in earlier times, it was not equity itself that aroused suspicion but chancery courts (and particularly their administration). See Katz, "The Politics of Law," in Fleming and Bailyn, eds., Law in American History, 261, 265. In any case, the blending of jurisdictions in the federal courts, whether intended as an economy or as a check upon the supposed prerogative of chancellors, marked an important step toward modern practice. 8 Pendleton to Innes, Nov. 9, 1971, Mays, ed., Pendleton Papers, n, 581.

81

PROCEDURES OF THE COURTS

plored by bringing a suit in chancery. For the most part Innes retained the historically different language of the separate jurisdictions: the initiator of a law suit was a plaintiff, of an equity suit a complainant; the phrase, "It is considered by the court that . . ." prefaced judgments at law, while the phrase "It is ordered by the Court" preceded inter­ locutory and final decrees in chancery. However, in Kentucky the person against whom a chancery suit was directed was called the de­ fendant, as in law, and not the respondent, as was more common in equity. The First Congress not only blended the jurisdictions of law and equity, it also blurred the traditional differences between the kinds of evidence acceptable to law courts and equity courts. In England, law courts required that evidence be given by oral testimony, while chan­ cery courts required that evidence be given in written form. But sec­ tions 15 and 30 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 made both kinds of evi­ dence admissible in both kinds of cases. The former section specified that "all the said courts of the United States, shall have power in the trial of actions at law . . . to require the parties to produce books or writings . . . which contain evidence . . . under circumstances where they might be compelled to produce the same by the ordinary rules of proceeding in chancery." The latter section stated "[tjhat the mode of proof by oral testimony and examination of witnesses in open court shall be the same . . . in the trial of causes in equity . . . as of actions at common law." Yet it permitted depositions (written testimony), under certain circumstances, "in any civil cause." 9 Innes evidently believed that section 30 superseded state practice (which permitted depositions in equity) unless the exceptional cir­ cumstances were clearly applicable. But requiring oral testimony in chancery suits was, he wrote, tedious and troublesome both to the court and to litigants. 10 Waiting for witnesses caused innumerable continuances in "7 causes out of 10 on the Equity side of the Docket," and he complained that the inconveniences of the requirement were 9

ι Stat. 73. Section 15 was apparently intended to extend discovery procedures available in chancery to law. Goebel, Antecedents and Beginnings, 483-501. Sec­ tion 30 permitted depositions from persons who (1) lived more than 100 miles from the court, or (2) were bound on a voyage to sea, or (3) were about to leave the United States or the district, or (4) were "ancient or very infirm." Examples of law cases in which depositions were permitted are: Adair v. DeGraffenreidt, District Court Order Book A, Mar. 18, 1794, 56; Berry v. Starns, ibid., June 17, 1795, 99; Coleman v. Wilkins, ibid., June 21, 1796, 117; Gibbs v. Christy, ibid., July 11, 1798, 207; Horner v. Singleton, District Court Order Book B, Mar. 11, 1799, 34. (Hereafter cited as DC OB.) 10 Innes to John Brown, Mar. 18, 1798 (typescript), Innes Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, xxvrn, 9-212.

82

PROCEDURES O F T H E COURTS

"so apparent that Gentlemen of the barr are defeating the law by con­ 11 senting in many instances to take depositions." Innes thoroughly dis­ approved of such avoidance of the intent of the statute and repeatedly urged that it be amended. His petitions were finally granted in 1802, when the Jeffersonians' judiciary act permitted federal courts to accept 12 depositions wherever they were allowed in state practice. Departures from tradition were difficult for a traditionalist like Innes and he made as few as possible. 13 Yet for some unknown reason he per­ mitted common law cases to be brought under only eight of the dozens of available forms of action: case, covenant, debt, detinue, ejectment, trespass, writ of dower, and writ of right. 1 4 What is even more surpris­ ing is that there were no cases in trover or assumpsit, as were common in other courts during the period. The Order Books did not repeat the early stages of procedures in law, that is, the filing of the declaration or the application for a writ. 1 5 But after the initial issuance of process the court's respect for custom is evident in its careful observation of the proprieties that had become enshrined in centuries of English juris­ prudence. Declarations were answered by demurrers or an appropriate formal plea; replications by rejoinders, surrejoinders by rebutters, fol­ lowed by surrebutters, until the issue was joined. All of these were carried on in the antique language of the formal pleadings and spread across the Order Books. 16 11

Innes to John Breckinridge, Dec. 27, 1801, Breckinridge Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, xxi, 3559. 12 π Stat. 166, sec. 25. Jefferson described himself as having been "once a great advocate for introducing viva voce testimony," but changed his mind after learning that in Kentucky and Virginia "it worked inconveniently." Thomas Jefferson to Breckinridge, Jan. 29, 1800, Breckinridge Family Papers, xvm, 3164. 13 Like an English chancellor, he adopted the somewhat uncommon practice of using advisory juries (in equity cases dealing with land), for reasons suggested in Chapter Eight. 14 These terms (and others) are defined in the glossary (Appendix E ) . Case, covenant, debt, detinue, and trespass are discussed in Chapter Seven; ejectment, writ of dower, and writ of right in Chapter Eight. Actions at law employed to enforce the revenue acts are discussed in Chapter Five; criminal charges unrelated to the revenue acts in Chapter Six. 15 Some of these papers, although not all of them, are included in the Complete Record of the Seventh Circuit Court, after May 1807. The Complete Record is not, however, a record of all of the cases heard in the circuit court. For example, the Complete Record for the November term 1807 includes papers for 32 cases, but the court at that term heard 64 new cases, 191 old cases, and handed down 56 judgments. Similar discrepancies are found for all of the terms, and the grounds for inclusion or exclusion of cases in the Complete Record are not known. 16 For a description of these pleadings, see Nelson, Americanization of the Common Law, 72-77. The modernization of pleading observed in Massachusetts as early as 1776 is not evident in the Kentucky federal courts during Innes's tenure.

83

PROCEDUBES O F T H E C O U R T S

This devotion to the rituals of the common law meant that the Ken­ tucky federal courts retained the ancient pleadings of ejectment cases, with lengthy fictitious exchanges between mythical legal contestants, long after that practice had been abandoned in the state courts. A Kentucky statute of December 18, 1800, provided that "[i]n actions of Ejectment, it shall be lawful for the Plaintiff to declare in his proper name . . . against the Defendant in his proper name . . . and instead of the fictitious suggestions of lease, entry and ouster to state that he is legally entitled to the premises." 17 Even though the federal court followed state laws (as required by section 34 of the Judiciary Act of 1789) in much more sensitive matters like the occupying claimant acts, it preferred the older way here, as cumbersome and confusing as it was. So John Doe, Richard Roe, John Den, Richard Fen, and many other characters with ingenious alliterative names continued to sue one another throughout this period. The court was also strict about maintaining the limitations on join­ der. Because of the narrowly defined areas of common law actions, a plaintiff often had to file several suits to achieve his remedy. If he had suffered a financial loss from a broken contract, he might be required to file two suits: one action in covenant, and another action in debt. If a dual partnership defaulted, the plaintiff had to sue one member, pursue that case through judgment, and then sue the second member. A creditor hoping to recover money borrowed by one individual at five different times had to file five different suits and wait for each to reach judgment separately. 18 Attorneys were reminded that this was a court that expected them to discharge their duties properly. If a lawyer was not present when his client's case was called, the cause was dismissed and the counsel's absence noted in the records. When they signed complaints, they at­ tached "p-q·" (pro querente: for the plaintiff) to their names. They were required to observe the litany of the pleadings. Judge Innes once admonished counsel: "The Latitude contended for by Mr. Attorney goes at once to destroy that System of Good pleading which has stood the test for Ages past and which I hope will continue to be strictly attended to by Judges." 19 17

C. S. Morehead and Mason Brown, A Digest of the Statute Laws of Kentucky, ι (Frankfort, Ky., 1834), 583. 18 A federal statute passed in 1813 (m Stat. 21) made it possible to combine more than one action in a single suit. But because it was passed so near 1816, it had1 9 little effect upon the caseload of the court in our period. Morrison v. Jewell, in [Harry Innes], "Cases in the Court of the United States for the District of Kentucky, from its first Organization to the year 1806 Inclusive," United States Court for the Western District of Kentucky, Louisville, 83-91.

84

PROCEDXJBES O F T H E C O U R T S

Yet for the modern reader, this continuing repetition of form and language is almost totally unenlightening. Except for the litigants' true names, there is little to distinguish one covenant case from another covenant case, or one debt case from another debt case. The chancery suits present a striking contrast. Equity evidence fills page after page, because all of the paper processes associated with equity (wills, depositions, warrants, patents, surveys, accounts, and orders) were copied along with the proceedings of each day's docket. Every chancery suit seemed to involve a different set of variables, although almost all were long, complicated, and continued on the records for many years. The hard-pressed clerk was permitted only standardized abbreviations, such as "ha fa" for the writ habere facias possessionem, "sci fa" for the writ scire facias, "Chy" for chancery, and "exon" for execution. Few allowances were made for the problems of hand copying records after busy terms, and no free thinking was permitted. In March 1800, a term during which 243 cases were heard in fourteen days, Judge Innes announced new rules requiring the minutes to be written up before the next sitting, or a fine of five dollars would be levied. The clerk was also ordered not to take any step on the Rules Docket without instructions in writing signed by the litigant or his counsel, or a fine of fifty cents would be charged. Furthermore, he was to report to the judge, under penalty of ten dollars, any processes not returned by the marshal by noon on the Saturday preceding the next term.20 (Evidently Thomas Tunstall had been lax in performing his duties.) Much of the time of the court, especially in its early years, was taken up by Innes's supervision of the details of judicial administration: granting continuances to plaintiffs, complainants, and defendants; ordering their appearances at upcoming terms; permitting the amendment of declarations and answers; naming commissioners to take depositions at a time and place convenient to the counsel of both parties; designating persons to evaluate improvements and waste under the Kentucky occupying claimants laws; charging arbitrators to resolve disputes; and ordering surveyors to "go upon the lands in controversy on the [blank] day of [blank] if fair, if not then on the next fair day and then and there lay off and survey the same." Defendants were often slow in appearing, commissioners late in reporting, and surveyors careless about following the instructions of the court, so that such orders might be repeated term after term. It is not surprising that it took years for most cases to reach completion, both in law and in equity. In addition to other problems, many of 20 DC OB B, Mar. 27, 1800, 342.

85

PROCEDURES OF THE COURTS

the private cases rested upon diversity jurisdiction and defendants were not within an area that could be served conveniently by the marshal. In many cases, the Order Books stated: "It appearing to the Court that the Defendant is not an inhabitant of this District, it is ordered that he enter his appearance on the first day of next Court," three or six months later. A copy of the appearance order was placed in newspapers in the county where the land in dispute lay or the event in dispute had occurred, and in the county where the court wasjield, for twelve weeks preceding the next session. Such orders were often repeated for several terms until the defendant obtained counsel to appear for him in Kentucky. While cases were continued time and time again, the Order Books occasionally note: "This cause is continued until next Court, on condition that the parties then be prepared for trial." Sometimes the court itself was unexpectedly adjourned by bad weather, illness, or Indian trouble. But if it was held, the parties were expected to be there on the day appointed. A tardy plaintiff might discover his cases dismissed for failure to prosecute, a late defendant adjudged in default, regardless of how long their suits had been before the court. The monotony of entries in the Order Books rarely lifts to reveal whatever flexibility may have existed in the management of the docket. But an occasional entry suggests that the court was not as rigid as the forms through which it carried on its business. For example, in an 1814 writ of right case, the unsuccessful tenants (defendants) moved for a new trial, basing their motion on four points of law. At the conclusion they pleaded that "if the counsel for Tenants is mistaken in all these points of law, then the Tenants move for a new trial because of the mistake of the counsel in preparing and managing their defense."21 The argument prevailed, and a new trial was awarded at which judgment went for the tenants. 22 In 1803 a successful plaintiff swore out an execution six weeks after judgment, despite a court order staying execution for three months. The defendant protested at the next term of court, and the judge admitted that while the proper action would have been a writ of error coram nobis, "inasmuch as the Plaintiff [would be] thereby delayed and put to costs, the court is willing to proceed in this summary way: the [previous] execution is hereby quashed, and the Plaintiff is given leave to sue out another."23 This is an example of how Innes occasion21 Green v. Watkins, Circuit Court Order Book C, May 23, 1814, 446. (Hereafter cited as CC OB.) 22 Green v. Watkins, CC OB D, Nov. 25, 1815, 303. 23 Davidson and Goddard v. Wilson and Eastin, DC OB D, Mar. 24, 1803, 158.

86

PROCEDURES OF T H E COURTS

ally demonstrated a flexibility that reinforced the substance of the court's power. A plaintiff with five ejectment cases on the docket once showed up nine days after he had been found in default for failure to appear and his cases had been nonsuited. He asked the court to set aside the nonsuits and to reinstate his cases because he said he had been detained on the Ohio River by high winds. Furthermore he had thought that the suits would not be tried that term because he heard that one of the judges was ill. (Justice Todd was absent from this term.) Despite objections by the defendants, Judge Innes sustained the plaintiff's motion, and his cases were returned to the docket.24 Such reinstatements were not infrequent, but they were seldom explained. In fact, the reappearance of apparently terminated cases occurred so often that it is one factor that rendered the statistical totals of the work of the court out of balance. Another major factor was the number of interlocutory (provisional) decrees in equity suits not identified by that term. The number of cases pending was not the remainder when judgments were subtracted from cases previously docketed. Sometimes previous judgments were set aside without explanation. At other times a case reappeared because of action taken by the winner to enforce the judgment of the court, or by the loser to postpone it. An application for an injunction or a supersedeas, or for writs of fieri facias, capias ad satisfaciendum, or venditione exponas, all brought cases that had seemed completed back on the Order Books as active causes. A large number of pending suits also ceased to be active without any explanation. There are probably a number of reasons why cases remained open in the records when they were actually finished. There must have been a great amount of untidy clerical housekeeping, including unnoted self-executing writs, unmarked office dismissions, and other actions in the clerk's office that were not recorded in the Order Books. Many litigants simply disappeared. Others dropped their cases or reached agreement without informing the court. By 1816, one-third of the private causes docketed were technically still pending, although many of these had been inactive for years. But despite inevitable irregularities in their holographic records and occasional evidence of leniency, the style of the Kentucky federal courts was typically manifested by their insistence upon tradition, form, and authority. This, of course, extended to management of the one area of lay participation—the role of juries. Judge Innes, espe24 Blight v. Can, Blight v. Shacklett, Blight v. Woolfolk, Blight v. Richard Stith, Blight v. William Stith, CC OB C, May 4, 1814; ibid., May 13, 1814.

87

PKOCEDURES O F T H E C O U R T S

cially, always retained a firm hand over their activities in civil cases. While the facts were the jurors' business, as the law was his, it is clear that he did not encourage their independence. It made no difference whether defendants denied the charges against them by pleading the general issue or by special pleading: juries had little latitude in civil suits.25 In private cases unrelated to the internal revenue acts, for example, jurors almost invariably found for the plaintiffs. This result, and the fact that sometimes more than a dozen jury trials were held in a single day, indicate that directed verdicts must have been common although the phrase was never recorded.26 The judge also did not hesitate to set aside facts found by juries.27 On one occasion, refusing a motion made by counsel to instruct the jury "that they were at liberty to think for themselves," Judge Innes instead admonished the jurors that they were "absolutely bound by the opinion of the Court."28 Counsel formalized his disagreement by filing a bill of exceptions, but the judge's instructions prevailed.29 It was uncommon for the Order Books to report that a jury failed to reach a verdict, although juries were often discharged without making a finding. The technique usually employed for dismissing a jury was to withdraw a juror, "whereupon the jury was discharged." Sometimes juries were excused after reporting, "if the law be for the Defendant, then we find for him; if the law be for the Plaintiff, then we find for him." The judges generally "took time" on these cases and announced judgment a term or two later. 25 A special plea was a denial of some specific fact in the plaintiff's declaration; pleading the general issue constituted a denial of all the allegations. William E. Nelson has written that the former gave more authority to the court (because only the judge could know the legal consequences of the jury's finding) and the latter gave more authority to the jury (because they then had some discretion in applying the law to the facts). The growing use of pleading the general issue that Nelson has observed in Massachusetts between 1760 and 1830, and which he believes had the effect of broadening the base of decision making, is not evident in the Kentucky federal courts during the period 1789-1816. Nelson, Americanization of the Common Law, 21-35. 26 It is also likely that the high proportion of acquittals in the government's criminal cases against distillers was due to Innes's instructions to juries. This is described in Chapter Five. Appendix B gives judgments on private suits; Appendix C, judgments on the government's cases. " E.g., Watts v. Massie, D C OB F, July 25, 1805, 176. 28 Buck and Brander v. Casey, CC OB B, Nov. 9, 1810, 400. This case was unusual because it had been appealed from the Kentucky General Court to the Court of Appeals and then removed to the federal court. 29 Bills of exceptions were formal objections to the judge's rulings, which were written in the Order Books at the time judgment was rendered and signed by the judge. They were signified by a hand-drawn seal which resembled a four-leaf clover without the stem.

88

PROCEDURES OF THE COURTS

Judge Innes may have been authoritarian in his management of juries, but he appears not to have been capricious. In criminal cases unrelated to the revenue acts he was particularly careful to respect the judgment of jurors, even when he disagreed with them.30 He did not rush them to judgment but continued trials longer than was then customary in England. However, his handling of the few criminal trials stands in marked contrast to his management of the hundreds of civil suits, where jury deliberations seem often to have been pro forma. But even when he opposed a jury finding in civil suits, he conscientiously tried to balance English traditions with the requirements of the American Constitution. For example, a jury in 1805 found for a defendant, a former collector of revenue, who owed the government $1,419 in taxes collected but not paid over to the government. The case had begun back in 1802, and had been continued, for many reasons, for nine terms. (According to the custom of the time, the collector was charged with arrears of $4,000, the amount of his bond; the exact amount owed was learned from the final judgment, which did not come until May 1810.) Judge Innes did not agree with the jury's finding but felt constrained by the provision of the Seventh Amendment which states that "no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law." When he granted the government a new trial he explained his reasons in one of the few written opinions recorded in the Order Books: In a case with strong evidence on both sides, like this one, the Court ought not to grant a new trial. The Jury is the proper judge of which scale of evidence preponderates. [Many precedents cited from English reports.] On the other hand, there are cases where new trials have been granted. [Other English precedents cited.] The principle which actuated the Courts in the last recited cases was, for the attainment of Justice Courts ought tenaciously to adhere to decisions which establish the rights to property. Yet in points of practice they ought to vary as experience shall evince their convenience or inconvenience. The great object of Courts is to preserve the rights of the people and to do Justice in the case of contests. . . . The verdict in this case did not meet my approbation and as the practice of granting a new trial when there is evidence on both sides has been established by 30 See Chapter Six, especially Innes's joining in a petition for a pardon for the defendant Berry, found guilty of mail robbery.

89

PROCEDURES O F T H E COURTS

Judges of the first eminence, I feel myself supported in granting the present motion.31 This opinion by Judge Innes is typical of his frequent reliance upon English precedents. In this instance, his use of authorities on both sides of the question reflected the state of English law, which had not then "attained any systematic clarity" on the matter of control over civil juries.32 Granting a new trial, despite a jury finding for the defendant, was one of several permissible means of control by judges that was current in England in this period. Another illustration of the degree to which the Kentucky federal judges controlled their court was the frequency with which they terminated cases. Since judicial termination of a cause had the effect of favoring the defendant, these actions tended to redress the balance which was otherwise heavily weighted in favor of the plaintiffs; when cases went to trial, juries almost always found for them. Despite the directed verdicts that must have lain behind those juries' decisions, it is clear that the judges were also concerned with the rights of defendants, because in 24 percent of the civil cases docketed they forbade the continuation of the legal action in their court. Sometimes this reflected the limitations on federal jurisdiction, a consideration of which Justice Todd was much more sensitive than was Judge Innes. But more often they both exercised the latitude permissible in contemporary English practice by using a variety of terminating options. Of a total of 320 cases that were formally terminated by the judges, they quashed and dismissed 289 cases for various reasons, including want of jurisdiction, and declared 31 plaintiffs nonsuited. The courts even used compulsory nonsuits (when the plaintiff failed to sustain his case with sufficient evidence), suggesting that the judges were consciously following English custom.33 Another reason for ending cases, and the one that best reflects the combination of lengthy, cautious litigation and limited life expectancy, si U.S. v. Moore, DC OB F, Mar. 26, 1805, 39. Edith Guild Henderson, "The Background of the Seventh Amendment," Harvard Law Review, LXXX (1966), 299. The jury's unlimited right to acquit in a criminal case, except in criminal libel cases, was well established by this time. Ibid., 290. 33 See Appendix B. Nonsuits were ruled out in Virginia in 1794. Henderson, "Background of the Seventh Amendment," 301. No nonsuits were found in reported Kentucky state court cases during this period. It is possible that there were some in unreported Court of Appeals cases, but the case papers were destroyed by fire. Achilles Sneed, Decisions of the Court of Appeals of the State of Kentucky from March 1, 1801 to January 18, 1805 Inclusive, ed. Harvey Myers (Cincinnati, 1869), v. (II Kentucky Reports.) 32

90

PROCEDURES OF THE COURTS

was the notation that "the Plaintiff [or Defendant] having departed this life, this cause abated." These must have been cases in which there were no known heirs and the litigant had died intestate, because section 31 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 expressly provided that pending law cases could be continued to judgment by executors or administra­ tors. Chancery cases, however, were frequently reinstituted through bills of revivor. Many land cases were continued on the docket in this way, while others, involving great quantities of land, were not. If there were heirs, they evidently decided not to pursue this litigation, which was often an expensive and risky gamble in Kentucky. The Kentucky federal court also followed the English custom of taxing costs and awarding them to the winner. (Costs were distinct from damages, which were assessed by juries and awarded to the suc­ cessful plaintiff.) At this time, costs in Kentucky, as in England, in­ cluded attorneys' remuneration as well as court fees.34 All of these ex­ penses were standardized and noted in the rules. The total amount of money involved could be considerable, especially for a cause continu­ ing over many terms requiring writs, depositions, service of process, witnesses, juries, and lawyers. Yet many plaintiffs and complainants evidently achieved their purposes by the mere filing of their suits. The large number of unterminated causes suggests that many defendants did not contest the action or answer the court. They probably just disappeared, and it was generally expensive, uncertain, or even un­ necessary to pursue them. There were several provisions regarding costs that tended to protect the innocent to a greater degree than he is protected today. For ex­ ample, the initial internal revenue act provided that a defendant might recover his costs if the case resulted in a verdict for him, or in a non­ suit. 35 The following year the statute was amended to deny this reim­ bursement in cases where the informer or plaintiff was an officer of the government "specially authorized to commence such prosecution," if the court certified that there was reasonable ground for bringing the charges. 30 Yet in the internal revenue cases arising at the end of the decade in Kentucky, the court regularly allowed costs to the innocent defendant to be collected from the informer even when he was a reve­ nue officer or the attorney for the district. This policy went further than a statute passed in 1799, providing that the United States was 34

The Process Act of Sept. 28, 1789 provided that the fees charged in federal courts should be the same as those of the supreme court of the state, ι Stat. 93, sec. 2. 36 35 ι Stat. 209, sec. 42. ι Stat. 278, sec. 5.

91

PROCEDUBES O F T H E COURTS

responsible for the fees of the court when a cause brought under the penal statutes was discontinued, nonsuited, or judgment went for the 37 defendant. There is abundant other evidence that the court was un­ sympathetic with criminal prosecutions under the revenue acts; ap­ parently it wished to protect the defendants even in civil cases. Al­ though Judge Innes may have exceeded the intentions of the statutes, no protest is recorded in the records. Those who did lose their cases were not without redress: chancery suits could be appealed to the United States Supreme Court, and law cases could be carried there on writs of error. (A writ of error peti­ tioned the high court to reexamine matters of law in the record, but not matters of fact.) When counsel disagreed with the decisions of the court, objections were stated in bills of exceptions and noted in the Order Books. Although there were dozens of bills of exceptions in the records, only forty-four private cases were carried to the Supreme Court. 3 8 It is likely that the expense deterred all but the most deter­ mined and wealthy litigants—those who had much to gain but who could also afford defeat. The records of the federal courts in Kentucky show that in addition to hearing cases, they also performed naturalization proceedings for new citizens. Section 8 of Article ι of the Constitution provided that "Congress shall have power . . . to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization," and Congress implemented this in 1795.39 Although it has been suggested that the statute was implemented only by state courts until 1906, this was not the case in Kentucky. 40 Whether Ken­ tucky state courts exercised the concurrent authority authorized by the statute cannot be known until or unless those court records can be found. But the federal court did accept statements of intent and affi­ davits that residence requirements had been met from eighteen per­ sons during this period. The judges then administered an oath by which the applicant swore to support the Constitution and "that he doth absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty whatever, 41 particularly to [that of his native land]." "3 81 Stat. 626. Thirty-nine cases dealt with land and are described in Chapter Eight. The others were: two related detinue cases, two debt cases, and one case in covenant. (Five other suits were prepared by the U.S. attorneys.) 39 1 Stat. 414. 40 Leonard D. White, The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History (New York, 1948), 395. 41 Statement of William Kelley, DC OB A, July 9, 1798; George Hamilton, ibid.; David Bell, ibid.; Henry Clarke, ibid.; George Clarke, ibid.; John Mullanphy, 92

PROCEDURES OF THE COURTS

Overlooking a federal court's performance of naturalization ceremonies is an illustration of the imperfect conclusions previous scholars have been able to draw when they have not studied court records themselves. The naturalization procedures are probably not important. But more serious is a misjudgment of the character of courts, which seems to have occurred because scholars have used scattered memoirs or statutes to generalize about what actually went on in the hundreds of courtrooms of the new nation. The Order Books, written opinions, and related papers of the federal courts in Kentucky from 1789 until 1816 demonstrate that the procedures in these courts, at least, were very different from the style usually attributed to lower courts in that period. It is possible that these courts were unique. Judge Innes once wrote that "where a Court is composed of a single Judge, he can adopt Rules regulating the proceedings in suits."42 Judge Innes's choice of traditional procedures, his insistence on maintaining the separation between law and equity, his rigorous demand for strict pleading, his narrow definitions of the common law actions, and his dominance over juries may all have been unusual for a judge in his generation. Yet it seems more likely that he was a typical, if not universal, figure. Where else would lawyers and judges who had been educated in the traditions of English law look for precedents and procedures but in English sources? It has long been recognized that the War for Independence was a limited revolution for political autonomy, not one that drastically or immediately changed the existing social or economic order. Why should it be assumed that resistance to the legal authority of Parliament required resistance to the familiar legal system of Englishmen? It may be that scholars have been mesmerized by Anglophobia, seduced by frontier theory, and misled by egalitarianism to construct a version of legal history that does not always coincide with fact. Even in Kentucky, Judge Innes's ideas about how to manage a court need not have endured for twenty-seven years if they were incompatible with the expectations of the population. It is conceivable that Judges McClung and McNairy could have altered the direction of the DC OB D, July 9, 1803; Adam Caldwell, ibid.; James Mitchell, ibid.; James Hughes, ibid.; Thomas Greavor, DC OB E, April 14, 1804; George Greer, ibid., Nov. 26, 1804; Johannes Goodman, DC OB F, July 13, 1805; Stephen Louis Hus Deforges, CC OB A, May 12, 1807; Henry Newberry, ibid., May 13, 1807; Nicholas Clarke, CC OB B, July 15, 1808; John Venice, ibid., Nov. 20, 1810; Owen Riley, CC OB C, May 9, 1812; John Adam Markley, ibid., June 2, 1813. 42 Draft opinion, Thompson v. Daois, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xsa, Pt. ii, 1-185.

93

PROCEDURES OF THE COURTS

court, if only briefly, in 1801-1802, had they wanted to. Judge Innes might easily have been impeached if he had not had popular support in 1806-1808. Certainly Justice Todd could have changed the procedures after the Seventh Circuit Court was established in 1807. But none of these things came to pass, and the courts remained essentially the same throughout the period. It should be noted that of all the criticisms that were made of the judges and of the laws they were called on to enforce, there were no charges that this was a Tory court, or that its formalities prevented the attainment of equal justice under law. On the contrary, the caseload indicates that it was a highly respected and popular institution. The evidence contained in the records of the Kentucky federal court suggests that a reassessment of American legal history is needed. The judges, clerks, marshals, attorneys, and the prominent lawyers who practiced before its bar, were born and educated in the colonies. Like most Kentuckians, they were vigorous supporters of the political revolution against England. Yet clearly all were loyal to the English legal system and comfortable with its precedents. The court was indeed affected by the environment: the substance of its caseload reflected the newness of the nation and the unsettled conditions of the frontier. But the procedures, practices, and principles of the court were nonetheless as consistent with the English judicial tradition as that first generation of Americans knew how to make them.

94

CHAPTER FIVE

The Internal Revenue Laws and Their Enforcement HE United States was by far the most frequent single plaintiff in the federal courts in Kentucky from 1789 to 1816. During those years, the government brought 775 suits: 100 criminal charges and 675 civil actions. Ninety-five percent of these cases resulted from the internal revenue laws passed in the new nation's first decade. The un­ popularity of these laws constituted a serious challenge to the power of the national government and to the authority of its courts in Ken­ tucky. How the courts met this challenge is revealed in a variety of long-forgotten contemporary sources. Certain federal statutes may be enforced both by criminal and by civil procedures, and both methods were used in Kentucky. Criminal charges could be brought in one of three ways. If one or more mem­ bers of a grand jury believed from their own knowledge that a federal statute had been violated, the grand jury could issue a presentment. If a competent public officer (such as a revenue inspector) in the course of his duties suspected such a violation, he could file an in­ formation with the court. If the United States attorney for the district had reason to suspect a violation, he could submit an indictment to the grand jury requiring their concurrence in the form of "a true bill." Civil procedures to enforce the internal revenue acts were simpler and were based upon the assumption that if a distiller had failed to pay his taxes he owed a debt to the government. If that appeared to be the case, the internal revenue supervisor could file an action in debt "on behalf of himself and for the benefit of the United States." Whether the charges were true was a fact to be determined by petit juries in all criminal cases, and in civil cases where more than twenty dollars was involved. The United States Court for the District of Kentucky was slow in getting underway: the first five terms were taken up by the promulga­ tion of rules of procedure, the appointment of court officials, and the admission of attorneys. It was not until June 1791 that Judge Innes issued an order that "the marshal. . . shall constantly summon a Grand Jury of twenty-four freeholders" at least fifteen days before the con­ vening of the court, to attend the first day of each term. 1

T

ι District Court Order Book A, June 21, 1791. (Hereafter cited as DC OB.)

95

INTERNAL REVENUE L A W S AND THEIR

ENFORCEMENT

Issuance and service of this order did not, however, insure the attendance of the grand jurors. The first group was discharged because only fourteen of the twenty-four appeared. Among those missing was James Speed, a prominent citizen of Mercer County who had administered the oath of office and the oath upholding the Constitution to Judge Innes when the federal court first opened.2 But the judge did not tolerate the absence of any grand juror, even Speed. All of the delinquents were summoned to attend the next court. Those who did not then appear, including Speed, were served with attachments. 3 When Speed did appear in March, his earlier absence was excused, and he was foreman of the grand jury for that term. 4 The names of the members of the panels do not indicate that the marshal sought out leading citizens for grand juries. While prominent men were included on the lists (Speed, Peter Casey, John Haggin, William Kennedy, for examples), the remainder seem to have been otherwise undistinguished citizens. All were treated equally: upon failure to appear, summonses were issued. If the absentee appeared at the following term, his absence was invariably excused. If he did not, the summons was followed by an attachment, then by an alias attachment, and finally by a forty-shilling fine. Those who did appear were rewarded. They were paid fifty cents for one day's attendance, and from fifty cents to two dollars for travel expenses. In addition, they served as petit jurors in as many as five trials, for each of which fifty cents was paid. The difficulty of assembling a large enough panel was temporarily resolved by the adoption of a new rule in the September 1792 term of the court, ordering that any sixteen of the grand jurors summoned should be a sufficient number to constitute a grand jury.5 Even this rule did not secure an adequate number the following March. In any case, these early grand juries were largely inactive, probably in part because of the limitations imposed by the instructions of the judge. For Judge Innes, who had eloquently described "the first Grand Inquest which hath been assembled in this District under the General Governance of the United States" as the "Guard' and "Protector of the Citizen" against the "Arbitrary arm of the Executive," nevertheless listed only eleven offenses as coming within the grand jury's jurisdic2

Thomas Speed, Records and Memorials of the Speed Family (Louisville, 1892), 57; DC OB A, Dec. 15, 1789, 1. 3 DC OB A, Sept. 20, 1791, 10; Jan. 12, 1792, 14. 5 * Ibid., Mar. 20, 1792, 21. Ibid., Sept. 18, 1792, 30.

96

INTERNAL REVENUE LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT 6

tion. These were: treason; misprision of treason; forgery of any public security of the United States; passing any such forged public security; stealing, falsifying, or avoiding any record, process, or other proceed­ ing of any of the courts of the United States; perjury in any oath taken pursuant to any of the laws of the United States; subornation of per­ jury; bribery; obstructing the execution of process of the United States; the rescue of persons convicted or awaiting trial on capital offenses under the laws of the Union; and offenses committed within the Indian territory. The list given to this federal grand jury is striking in its restraint, especially when it is compared with other instructions that Innes had given to state grand juries when he was a judge of the Kentucky Dis­ trict Court of Virginia. Those earlier jurors had been exhorted to re­ port a wide variety of offenses, including "Blasphemy, Profane cursing and swearing, Adultery, Fornication, Breaking of the Sabbath and Drunkenness." 7 It is clear that Innes believed that many offenses came under the common law jurisdiction of the state that were not cogniza­ ble in a federal court. The list is striking, also, because the judge did not instruct the federal grand jurors that the federal internal revenue laws were matters for their attention. Since he knew that "all the penal laws of the state" were within the cognizance of a state panel, he must have known that the penal laws of the United States were within the cognizance of a federal panel. 8 Furthermore, Judge Innes must have been aware that the internal revenue laws were being vio­ lated throughout Kentucky. The first of the internal revenue acts, a long and complicated statute with sixty-two sections, had been passed on March 3, 1791. It was followed over the next eight years by a half-dozen other major acts, all designed to make the collection of the tax on domestic distilled spirits more efficient, effective, and acceptable. 9 But acceptance was 6 Draft address, undated but prepared for the grand jury which convened Jan. 12, 1792. Harry Innes Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, xvm, 2-123. 7 Draft copy of an "Address to the Grand Jury" [1784?], ibid., 2-120. 8 Ibid., 2-123. Both the Judiciary Act of 1789 and the Internal Revenue Act of 1791 referred explicitly to the authority of federal courts over cases arising from federal statutes, ι Stat. 73, sees. 9, 11; ι Stat. 199, sec. 42. State courts were given concurrent jurisdiction over internal revenue cases arising more than 50 miles from a federal district court in 1794. ι Stat. 378, sec. 9. 9 ι Stat. 199, ι Stat. 267, ι Stat. 275, ι Stat. 378, ι Stat. 512, ι Stat. 626. Addi­ tional laws passed during this period amended and supplemented the principal statutes and specified procedures.

97

INTERNAL REVENUE L A W S AND THEIR E N F O R C E M E N T

rare in Kentucky, where the population generally was opposed both to the excise and to the purpose for which it was raised. The whiskey tax was designed by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton to defray the cost to the federal government of its recent assumption of the debts of the states. Most Kentuckians thought that they had already done their part in absorbing state debts by accepting depreciated currency and by purchasing Virginia treasury warrants for Kentucky lands, which were proving to be worth little more than the paper they were written on. They strongly objected to paying taxes to a government that seemed uninterested in solving either of their most pressing problems: protecting them from the Indians or securing the free navigation of the Mississippi from the Spanish. Moreover, a tax on domestic distilled spirits appeared to them to be discriminatory because it did not fall equally on all citizens in all parts of the country.10 It seemed unfair because whiskey was often the only common medium of exchange in the West, where specie was rare. And it seemed oppressive because it taxed their most valuable export. Whiskey had the greatest worth per unit of weight or volume, an important consideration when transportation was exceedingly difficult.11 Resistance to the internal revenue laws seems to have begun as early in Kentucky as in Pennsylvania, where it has received more attention because there a federal army was ultimately required to put down rebellion.12 By March 1792, Colonel Thomas Marshall who, as inspector of the Seventh Survey of the Eleventh District (Virginia), was the highest revenue officer in Kentucky, was already complaining to his superior about "the many violent enemies the law had."13 Although inspections had evidently been attempted, Marshall had been forced to postpone collections because his collectors' official commis10 "Papers Relating to What is Known as the Whiskey Insurrection in Western Pennsylvania, 1794," Pennsylvania Archives, 2d Ser., iv (Harrisburg, 1890), 5. 11 At this time production averaged 1¾ to 2 gallons per bushel. Henry G. Crowgey, Kentucky Bourbon (Lexington, 1971), 61. The only export of comparable value was tobacco, which was much bulkier. 12 Richard H. Kohn, "The Washington Administration's Decision to Crush the Whiskey Rebellion," Journal of American History, LIX (1972), 567-584. The similarity of events in Pennsylvania can be seen in Jacob E . Cooke, "The Whiskey Insurrection: A Re-evaluation," Pennsylvania History, xxx (1963), 316-346; William Miller, "Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insurrection," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXII (1938), 324-350; Leland D. Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels (Pittsburgh, 1939). 13 Thomas Marshall to Edward Carrington, Mar. 8, 1792, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, Record Group 58, Records of the Internal Revenue Service, National Archives. (Hereafter cited as Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives.) In 1794 Marshall's district was reorganized and renamed the District of Ohio, ι Stat. 270.

98

INTERNAL REVENUE LAWS AND THEIR

ENFORCEMENT

sions had not yet arrived and "had we made the least slip advantage 14 would have been taken of it." Marshall's problems were compounded by confusing, complicated, and sometimes unworkable statutes. Distillers were expected to reg­ ister their stills and to keep complete records—but they did neither. The law distinguished between distilleries in cities, towns, and villages on one hand (which were taxable according to the quantity and proof of the distilled product), and country stills on the other (which were taxable according to the capacity of the still). Rating the tax of the former was impossible because of the absence of records. Computing the tax of the latter was equally inexpedient: Colonel Marshall quickly complained about "the impracticability of measuring the stills on ac­ count of their being all at work." 15 Other statutory distinctions between distilleries and private stills were inapplicable in Kentucky, where almost every farmer was a distiller. And the provision that the penalties of the law were not to apply to persons who owned only one still not exceeding fifty gallons encouraged many to ignore the law altogether. 16 Congress was as inexperienced in drafting excise laws as it was unfamiliar with conditions on the frontier, and for once Alexander Hamilton's expertise was unequal to the task. 17 The very flexibility of the procedures created confusion. And Kentuckians who were opposed to the excise in principle took advantage of all the loopholes, leaving the burden of proof on the harassed agents. 18 These collectors were to receive a percentage of the duties collected, or half the penalties and forfeitures recovered in suits when distillers 14

Marshall to Carrington, Mar. 8, 1792, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. 15 Ibid. 16 ι Stat. 199, sees. 15, 21, 36, 43; ι Stat. 267, sec. 1. Section 15 of the latter statute, passed in May 1792, lowered duties but contained a bribe (or threat) to those on the frontier: any deficiency in the expected excise was to be made up from money raised for the protection of the frontiers. 17 Hamilton's key role in suggesting legislation and drafting procedures for implementing it is thoroughly documented in Harold C. Syrett, et al., eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, νπ-χνπι. 18 Because country stills and those under 400-gallon capacity in cities, towns, and villages were rated according to capacity, owners who produced high proof whiskey held a great competitive advantage over owners of larger stills and distill­ eries, whose products were taxed according to proof. When this was pointed out by Edward Carrington, Marshall's superior in Virginia, he was instructed to avoid discussing the matter and exposing the defect in the law. Tench Coxe to Carring­ ton, June 30, 1792, Letters Sent by the Commissioner of the Revenue and the Revenue Office, 1792-1807, M-414, roll 1, Records of the Internal Revenue Serv­ ice, Record Group 58, National Archives. (Hereafter cited as Letters Sent, Reve­ nue Office, M-414.) 99

INTERNAL REVENUE LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT

were found guilty of refusing to pay the tax.19 But there were no suits because the attorney for the district refused to bring charges, and grand juries did not return presentments. The act also offered revenue officers the option of distress (or distraint) and sale, a summary procedure by which the supervisor could issue a warrant to the marshal, who was then authorized to sell as many of the goods and chattels of a delinquent as were needed to realize the amount of money due to the government. If insufficient funds were realized from the sale, the offender could be imprisoned. Regardless of the statutory provisions, Judge Innes believed that distraint (seizure) required some overt act of defiance, and evidently the marshal shared the judge's views. In any case, the procedure could not have been expected to make the law any more popular. Colonel Marshall acknowledged that "distraining I fear will not at present answer our purposes."20 Pecuniary incentives were not enough, even after the colonel offered to contribute his one percent to get better enforcement in Nelson, Madison, and Mason Counties. 21 Inspection trips were so hazardous that he was obliged to accept the resignation of several collectors, and retained others only by shifting their assignments to other counties where the opposition was not yet organized. He refused one resignation because "no [other] person worthy of trust living in Nelson [County] could be got to accept" the job—a comment, incidentally, which indicates that opposition to the law transcended political loyalties, because Nelson County was a center of Federalist sentiment.22 In October 1792, Commissioner of Revenue Tench Coxe tried to be helpful by reporting that in Maryland, "aid to the Government has been derived from information being given by the trade. No persons are so much concerned to prevent infractions of the laws as the fair complying distiller."23 But in Kentucky, as the court records show, no mem19 The total costs of collection were not to exceed 7%. The collectors originally were allocated 4% for collections in cities, towns, and villages, and 5% for county stills. The percentage was continually raised and the distinction between cities and countryside eliminated. Colonel Marshall received a salary and a percentage of collections. (In 1794 his salary was $600.) Syrett et al., eds., Hamilton Papers, vm, 191; XH, 96; xvm, 167. 20 Marshall to Carrington, Mar. 8, 1792, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. 21 Ibid. Commissioner of the Revenue Tench Coxe was impressed by Marshall's "spirit and liberality" in contributing his percentage to the collectors and planned "to make it known in the proper places." Coxe to Carrington, Oct. 23, 1792, Letters Sent, Revenue Office, M-414, roll 1. 22 Marshall to Carrington, Mar. 8, 1792, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. 2 => Coxe to Marshall, Oct. 31, 1792, Letters Sent, Revenue Office, M-414, roll 1.

100

INTERNAL REVENUE LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT

ber of the general public was willing to act as an informer even for half the penalties and forfeitures. And the collectors had enough problems without filing informations against distillers. Soon Marshall and the collectors stood alone. In December 1792, the United States attorney for the district resigned his office, and for four years there was no one to prosecute violators of the law.24 The revenue officers could only threaten and cajole, and neither method was effective.25 In the spring of 1793, Collector Brooks was assaulted in Nelson County.26 Later, in the summer, Collector Hubble bought some whiskey for the army only to have it "rescued" from him.27 The following winter Hubble spent the night with a distiller, and while they slept the house was attacked and Hubble's money, saddlebags, and records for Mason and Bourbon Counties were stolen.28 Some time later, the collector of Fayette County was pulled from his horse, tarred, and rolled in leaves.29 What was equally remarkable was the role of the federal court. During all this period, grand juries were convened who proffered no presentments. No informations were filed with them and, of course, no indictments were handed down in the absence of a federal attorney. Marshall and his superior in Virginia, Edward Carrington, were forced to resort to civil procedures. In December 1793, Carrington brought two suits in case, apparently to recover the value of the stolen whiskey.30 The suits were continued at the March 1794 term and dismissed 24

William Murray preferred to become attorney general for Kentucky, and a state statute prohibited state officials from holding federal positions. Murray to the secretary of state [Thomas Jefferson], Dec. 7, 1792, Miscellaneous Letters of the Department of State, 1789-1906, M-179, roll 8, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives. (Hereafter cited as Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179). 25 Both are reflected in advertisements in the Kentucky Gazette (Lexington). See, for examples, Ky. Gaz., June 18, 1791; Mar. 24, 1792; Apr. 21, 1792; Apr. 28, 1792; Nov. 24, 1792; Jan. 12, 1793; July 27, 1793; Aug. 31, 1793; Nov. 23, 1793; Feb. 22, 1794. 2e Coxe to Carrington, Mar. 27, 1793, Letters Sent, Revenue Office, M-414, roll 1. 27 George Nicholas to Marshall, Aug. 25, 1793, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. 28 Marshall to Carrington, Mar. 20, 1794, ibid.; Ky. Gaz., Feb. 22, 1794. Part of the money and saddlebags were later recovered, but the records were never found. 29 Coxe to William Clarke, May 11, 1797, Tench Coxe Section, Coxe Papers, Manuscript Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 30 Case was a form of action used to recover damages which were the indirect consequence of the defendant's act. Carrington v. Saunders, Carrington v. Trotter, DC OB A, Dec. 17, 1793, 44.

101

INTERNAL REVENUE LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT

in July. To add insult to injury, Carrington was ordered to pay the 31 defendants' costs. Meanwhile, Alexander Hamilton thought of an ingenious way to secure compliance. Since the Treasury Department was already in the business of purchasing supplies for the army, it occurred to Hamilton 32 that distillers might be persuaded to pay their taxes in whiskey. When he was in western Pennsylvania with the troops during the Whiskey Rebellion, he wrote to Coxe: "It has been much insisted upon, that this part of the Country could not without oppression pay the duty in cash. The supply of the Western Army enables us to ac­ comodate [sic] in this particular, an option may therefore be either to pay in cash or in Whiskey." 33 But most Kentuckians would not be humored into compliance. Ap­ parently the only distillers who took advantage of Hamilton's offer were those who sold whiskey to the army. Interestingly enough, these sales were arranged by middlemen like Thomas Marshall and Thomas Carneal—who, because they were also revenue officers, were able to require payment as a condition of purchase. 3 4 The whiskey credited to duties in this way went to the army. But no money was forwarded from Kentucky, and evasion of the excise continued. 35 Eventually an earlier concession was repeated. In 1793, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson had agreed to forgive arrearages for the first year upon the promise of distillers that they would pay the tax sl Ibid., Mar. 18, 1794, 54; July 22, 1794, 61. Nicholas had strongly recom­ mended to Marshall that the suits be dropped. Nicholas to Marshall, Aug. 25, 1793, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. 32 The Treasury Department had taken over this function from the War De­ partment after St. Clair's defeat h a d been attributed in part to the inefficiency of earlier supply arrangements. Legislation authorizing the transfer was passed in February 1792 ( i Stat. 2 7 9 ) . John C. Miller, The Federalist Era 1789-1801 (New York, 1960), 147; Leonard D. White, The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History ( N e w York, 1948), 121. 33 Hamilton to Coxe, Nov. 17, 1794, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Ar­ chives. A copy of this letter, addressed to Henry Miller (acting quartermaster gen­ eral of the militia army), is in Syrett et al., eds., Hamilton Papers, xvir, 376. 34 Marshall to Coxe, Mar. 20, 1794, ibid. For their dual roles and purchase ad­ vertisements, see Ky. Gaz., Nov. 24, 1792; Mar. 29, 1794; Jan. 17, 1795. 35 Walter Lowrie and Walter S. Franklin, eds., American State Papers, Finance. Documents, Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, ι (Washington, 1834), 390, 391, 562, 593, 618; Coxe to John Brown, Mar. 30, 1797, Coxe Papers; Coxe to Marshall, Jan. 2, 1796, Letters of Tench Coxe, Com­ missioner of the Revenue, Relating to the Procurement of Military, Naval, and Indian Supplies, 1794-1796, M-74, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, National Archives; Treasury Department [Oliver Wolcott] to Thomas Carneal, Oct. 2 1 , 1797, Oliver Wolcott Papers, Manuscript Collection, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, xxxui, 44.

102

INTERNAL REVENUE L A W S AND THEIR

ENFORCEMENT

36

in the future. An extension of the grace period had been refused in 1793, but by 1795 the administration was willing to try again.37 When James Innes returned from his placating mission to Kentucky to inform residents there about the reopened negotiations for navigation of the Mississippi, he evidently convinced the central government that there was no possibility of securing compliance unless arrearages accruing before 1794 were forgiven.38 The Treasury Department apparently believed that a bargain had been struck, but both Hamilton and his successor, Oliver Wolcott, underestimated the determination of Kentuckians. Five years later Wolcott complained bitterly: "Influential Gentlemen of the State of Kentucky gave assurance in 1795, that by forebearing to demand the duties and penalties which had accrued prior to July 1794, a general compliance with the Law, would be thenceforward assured. A compromise was authorized on the principles suggested, but without securing the desired effect."30 By 1796 the Treasury Department was becoming desperate. Military action was inadvisable if not impossible, and the carrots of payment in whiskey and forgiveness of arrearages and penalties had been rejected. The stick of legal action was all that remained. But Wolcott had become suspicious about the absence of activity in the federal court, and he wrote Coxe to instruct Colonel Marshall to consider bringing suit. Equal application of the law was clearly not what Wolcott had in mind, as an early draft of his letter reveals: The first demand ought to be made of those delinquents, whose examples in opposition to the Law has been most influential. If they shall manifest a disposition to submit to the Law . . . the Supervisor ought to settle with them. . . . If however, opposition is made to a compromise on these Principles, suits ought to be commenced against this class of Men generally. With respect to persons of inferior consideration and influence, suits may be suspended until further instructions shall be received. In making tho experiment care 36 Thomas Jefferson to George Nicholas, July 15, 1793, Domestic Letters of the Department of State, 1784-1906, M-40, roll 5, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives. (Hereafter cited as Domestic Records, Dept. of State, M-40.) It was Jefferson's refusal to extend the grace period that prompted Nicholas to decline, for a second time, the appointment as United States attorney for the Kentucky District. Nicholas to Marshall, Aug. 25, 1793, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. 37 Hamilton to Coxe, Nov. 17, 1794; Jan. 27, 1795, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. 38 See the account of James Innes's mission in Chapter Two. 39 Wolcott to Thomas T. Davis, Feb. 25, 1800, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, XXi, Pt. i, 1-89.

103

INTEHNAL BEVENUE LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT

should bo taken to render it so general as that tho isouo may com plotoly demonstrate, tho offioaoy of judicial concern [crossed out in original]. If for any reason it shall appear adviseable [sic] to the Supervisor to institute some of the suits in the State Courts no ob­ 40 jections will be made at the Treasury. This strategy was, for the time being, as unsuccessful as its prede­ cessors. 41 Marshall could find no attorneys to assist him, and except for the suits in case brought earlier by Carrington in the federal court, its records indicate that term after term passed with no hint that federal statutes were being avoided or evaded. Grand juries were regu­ larly empaneled, but until March 1795 they did nothing but approve the First Census. 42 Their only presentment during this period was against Andrew Holmes, charged with retailing wine at his tavern in violation of an act that laid duties on foreign wines and foreign dis­ tilled spirits. 43 That presentment was quashed at the next term for "uncertainty and informality," and no grand juries were empaneled at any of the succeeding six terms. 4 4 The marshal was evidently vio­ lating the rule adopted in June 1791 that required a grand jury at each term. But there is no indication in the records that he was cen­ sured by the judge, although Innes did not hesitate to reprimand the marshal (and the clerk) for inattention to their duties on other oc­ casions. There was still no United States attorney for the Kentucky District 40 Wolcott to Coxe, June 27, 1796, Wolcott Papers, xxxi, 49. The final draft omitted the words crossed out. Wolcott to Coxe, June 27, 1796, Whiskey Rebel­ lion Papers, National Archives. Coxe transmitted the final draft verbatim to Mar­ shall. Coxe to Marshall, June 30, 1796, Letters Sent, Revenue Office, M-414, roll 2. 41 The strategies apparently did not work in Pennsylvania, either, according to a letter written by Coxe's successor to Marshall's successor. William Miller, Jr. to James Morrison, June 2, 1798, Whiskey Rebellion Papers, National Archives. Furthermore, Oliver Wolcott doubted that even the military action there had been successful in securing compliance. In 1799 he wrote President Adams that "though the insurrection has been suppressed the spirit which occasioned it still exists, and the friends of government and its officers have lost much of the influence which they once possessed." Wolcott to Adams, Nov. 18, 1799, Wolcott Papers, XL, 68. « DC OB A, Jan. 12, 1792, 18. The failure of grand juries to act is further evidence of the nonpartisan nature of the resistance to the whiskey tax. Under Kentucky statute, grand jurors were summoned by the marshal, and this practice was followed in the federal court. Harry Innes to John Breckinridge, Dec. 27, 1801, Breckinridge Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, xxi, 3559. The federal marshal during this period was Samuel McDowell, Jr., a cousin of the Marshalls and a strong Federalist. « ι Stat. 376; DC OB A, Mar. 17, 1795, 82. « DC OB A, June 17, 1795, 97. "Informality" meant lack of legal form.

104

INTERNAL REVENUE LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT

to take the initiative in prosecuting suits. Even Colonel Marshall's son-in-law, William McClung, had declined the office. The colonel suspected some kind of conspiracy and he expressed his frustration repeatedly in letters, including one to his son John, upon his appointment as United States attorney general: Now I hope we may be informed why we have no Attorney in this State for the United States. I have complained of this in every letter I have written on the subject of revenue. I cannot possibly have the revenue collected, as no one will comply with the laws without compulsion, and the government has not put it into my power to compel compliance. This I have tried, but without success. . . . there might be political reasons assigned for the neglect. But if that be the case, why am I repeatedly written to by the Commissioner of Revenue, as if it was expected that I could go on with the business in the same manner as if there were no impediment. 45 Matters seemed about to change in December 1796, when William Clarke accepted appointment as attorney for the district, and the fouryear vacancy in that office finally ended. On the day after he presented his commission of office to the court, the grand jury brought presentments against James Smith and Peter Utman for having forcibly obstructed a revenue collector.46 Responding to the new situation, Judge Innes promulgated new rules "to regulate penal laws when fines and imprisonment are instituted, or fines only."47 The rules provided for issuance of subpoenas, conditions for default judgments, acceptable pleadings, and other details which were to be completed "in the same manner as in Common Law." The only unexpected requirement was that the attorney for the district was to file an information on every presentment, stating the charge and the informer's name and residence. 48 45 Thomas Marshall to John Marshall, Nov. 6, 1795, quoted in Wfilliam] M[cClung] Paxton, The Marshall Family (Cincinnati, 1885), 22. Colonel Marshall apparently did not realize that his son had declined the appointment, just as he had earlier refused to serve as United States attorney for the District of Virginia, possibly for the same reasons that others had refused the office in Kentucky. George Washington to Alexander Hamilton, Oct. 29, 1795, Syrett et al., eds., Hamilton Papers, xix, 357. *e DC OB A, Dec. 21, 1796, 142. 47 Ibid., Dec. 23, 1796, 143-145. 48 Ibid. Theoretically a presentment resulted from an allegation made by a member of a grand jury, but the result of this rule was that subsequent presentments carried the names of informers who were revenue agents and not grand jurors.

105

INTERNAL REVENUE L A W S AND THEIR

ENFORCEMENT

The movement toward criminal litigation continued at the March term, when two related charges were brought. One was a presentment against Peter Smelzer for keeping an unregistered still (on an information filed by a collector); the second was an indictment against Joseph Steele for assault and battery against another revenue agent. Of equal significance was Clarke's response to the instructions given by Commissioner Coxe to Colonel Marshall the preceding June: he filed informations against men whose opposition to the law he believed had been influential. And the attorney chose to make examples of two who were unquestionably prominent: Thomas Jones, justice of the peace for Bourbon County and an elector of the state senate, and United States Senator John Brown, Judge Innes's closest friend.49 Colonel Marshall, confident that at last the forces of law and order had triumphed over neglect of duty, resigned his inspectorship. He wrote to President Adams: It may possibly be asked why, after holding the office during the most critical of troublesome times, I should now resign it, when I am no longer insulted, and abused. . . . In truth, this very change . . . furnishes a reason. . . . For having once engaged in the business of revenue I presently found myself of sufficient importance with the enemies of the Government here to be made an object of their particular malevolence—and while this was the case, I was determined not to be driven from my post.50 But Marshall's confidence was premature. No grand juries were empaneled at the next two terms of the court (in June and November 1797) nor did the new attorney file any more informations. Marshall and Carrington, it seemed, could depend only on each other. In November, Carrington filed four suits in debt, and Marshall filed one. Both men sued in their own names "and for the benefit of the United States" against four different defendants. 51 Despite Coxe's instructions, however, none of these defendants appears to have been particularly prominent. One was the man whom Carrington had sued in case in "9 DC OB A, Mar. 22, 1797, 151; William Clarke to Tench Coxe, May 11, 1797, Coxe Papers; W. T. Smith, A Complete Index to the Names of Persons, Places and Subjects Mentioned in Littell's Laws of Kentucky (Lexington, Ky., 1931), 97. 5» Marshall to Adams, Apr. 28, 1797, Misc. Letters, Dept. of State, M-179, roll 15. 51 Marshall's and Carrington's cautiousness in observing the proprieties (suing in their own names and for the benefit of the United States) is in marked contrast to the carelessness of Clarke, noted below.

106

INTERNAL REVENUE LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT

1793; another was sued by both Carrington and Marshall, so that there were only four defendants although there were five suits.52 This second use of civil actions proved little more productive than the first. Carrington discontinued the cases against three of the defendants and paid the costs. The fourth defendant, sued by both Carrington and Marshall, confessed judgment for $165.72 in 1798 but was able in 1802 to get a supersedeas staying proceedings on collection.53 A similar examination of the disposition of the earlier cases indicates that the first four criminal charges (those against Smith, Utman, Smelzer, and Steele) were also proving futile. The charge against Utman was abated by his death. The charge against Smith was continued at every term until July 1798, when he was able to prove to the satisfaction of the court that process had been served on the wrong James Smith. He then recovered his costs from Clarke. A new information was filed and new process issued against James Smith, merchant. This case, like many others, remained open throughout the remainder of the period under examination.54 The charges against Smelzer and Steele, brought in March 1797, were continued the following June. In November Steele's charge was quashed for informality. Smelzer's case was continued until March 1798, when it was discontinued on the motion of Clarke, with the defendant paying costs.55 Still the attorney persevered. He filed an information against Dudley Mitcham for using an unregistered still and got a presentment from the grand jury in March 1798.56 But then no grand jury was empaneled in July, and Clarke could only file informations against two more distillers, John Shawhan and James Caldwell.57 It was uphill work. Finally, in November 1798, Judge Innes announced a new rule: No person shall on whom any process shall be served returnable to this Court, or has a Suit depending herein, or who may be sum52 Carrington v. Saunders, Carrington v. Raoenscraft, Carrington v. Helm, DC OB A, Nov. 20, 1797, 169; Carrington v. Horine, Marshall v. Horine, ibid., Nov. 21, 1797, 174. 53 The action may have been used because of Marshall's death in 1802. No further proceedings were recorded that might have revived the debt case in the name of his heirs or in the name of the United States. Marshall v. Horine, DC OB A, July 9, 1798, 196, 197; Horine v. Marshall, DC OB C, Nov. 20, 1802, 368; Dec. 1, 1802, 418. 5* DC OB A, Mar. 21, 1797, 147; June 20, 1797, 162; Nov. 20, 1797, 170; July 12, 1798, 211; DC OB B, Nov. 19, 1798, 4. 55 DC OB A, Mar. 21, 1797, 146, 147; June 20, 1797, 162; June 21, 1797, 165; Nov. 20, 1797, 168, 170; Nov. 21, 1797, 171; Mar. 12, 1798, 180. 57 »« Ibid., Mar. 12, 1798, 178. Ibid., July 12, 1798, 211.

107

INTERNAL REVENUE LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT

moned as a witness in any suit or question depending in the Court, or who is a distiller of Spirits within this district [italics added], shall be summoned as a Grand Juror; and the Marshall before he summons a Grand Juror is directed to make the necessary inquiry agreeably to this Regulation.58 The new rule had an immediate impact: the November grand jury issued presentments against five persons for operating unregistered stills.50 For the first time in the seven years since passage of the internal revenue act, grand jurors brought charges based on their own knowledge of violations of the law. And once begun, the trend continued: in March 1799, thirteen distillers were presented; in July, another; in November, five more; in March 1800, an additional six. The charges were substantially the same in every case.60 And, meanwhile, Clarke continued to file informations. He brought five in November 1798, two in March 1799, and one each in March and November 1800.61 However, these presentments and informations were not followed by convictions. When the cases came to trial, it became evident that petit jurors refused to convict their neighbors of criminal charges when their only crime was violating the revenue acts. As Judge Innes had pointed out in his address to the first federal grand jury: Trials by Jury have from time immemorial been considered as the basis of Liberty . . . They are the great bulwark which intervenes between the Magistrate and the Citizen. . . . In Criminal cases . . . no Offender can be arraigned at the Bar, until his Offence hath been inquired into by the Grand Inquest . . . and found to be true by 58 DC OB B, Nov. 26, 1798, 27. The rule was evidently put into effect before it was recorded in the Order Book. 59 U.S. v. Trimble, U.S. v. Bush, U.S. v. Hardwick, U.S. v. Lewis, U.S. v. McKenney, DC OB B, Nov. 19, 1798, 1. Because of the limitations on joinder, two presentments were made for two of these men (Trimble and Bush) for failure to enter on two different dates. The total number of presentments was, therefore, seven. 60 U.S. v. Trimble, U.S. v. Hockaday, U.S. v. Singleton, U.S. v. Bayer, U.S. v. GaIbraith, U.S. v. Dodson, U.S. v. Ellis, U.S. v. Stewart, U.S. v. Bogio, U.S. v. Gouge, U.S. v. Wills, U.S. v. Peeples, U.S. v. Logan, DC OB B, Mar. 12, 1799, 44-48. U.S. v. Farrow, ibid., July 8, 1799, 87; U.S. v. Jackman, U.S. v. Teter, U.S. v. Adams, U.S. v. Shackleford, U.S. v. Price, ibid., Nov. 18, 1799, 130, 131; U.S. v. Randolph, U.S. v. Allen, U.S. v. Dawson, U.S. v. Spaulding, U.S. v. Keith, U.S. v. Barbee, ibid., Mar. 11, 1800, 238, 239. 61 U-S. v. Beauchamp, U.S. v. Payton (two charges), U.S. v. Lee (two charges), DC OB B, Nov. 11, 1798, 16; U.S. v. Trimble, U.S. v. Bush, ibid., Mar. 11, 1799, 34, 36; U.S. v. Heath, ibid., Mar. 10, 1800, 229; U.S. v. Robinson, ibid., Nov. 18, 1800, 479. The list of names indicates that the Scots-Irish did not dominate the distilling industry, as is commonly supposed.

108

INTERNAL REVENUE LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT

the voice of twelve of them at least, his trial then comes on before a Petit Jury where a unanimous voice is necessary to find him guilty.62 Petit jurors in Kentucky apparently saw themselves as such a "great bulwark" between the government and its citizens, and Judge Innes assisted them by rigidly maintaining procedural safeguards. The cases of Brown, Jones, Trimble, and Bush illustrate how the judge and the jurymen prevented enforcement of the unpopular revenue laws through criminal charges. John Brown's case was the simplest of these, but even it required five terms (twenty months) to come to judgment. Clarke filed the information in March 1797, and secured a writ of venire facias ad respondendum (summoning a defendant against whom a misdemeanor has been charged). When Brown did not appear in June, a capias ad respondendum (ordering the marshal to take the defendant and keep him for trial) was issued. This was followed by an alias capias ad respondendum in November. There is no mention at all of the case at the March 1798 term, possibly because Brown was then attending Congress.63 Brown pleaded not guilty in July and "putteth himself upon the country," the traditional request for a jury trial. At the trial in November it turned out that Brown was being prosecuted not for any misconduct on his part but because a former owner of his still had failed to enter it or pay duties on it. The court disagreed with the government's contention that the proceedings were in rem (against the still) and disallowed evidence relating to the alleged transgressions of the former owner. This left the jury free to acquit Brown. Lack of proof and poor pleading appear to have accounted for Clarke's failure to prosecute successfully one of Kentucky's most prominent Jeffersonians.64 The charge against Thomas Jones (the Bourbon County justice of the peace) was more complicated, continued longer, and gave Innes an opportunity to expose Clarke's supposed incompetence. The initial information filed in March 1797 was quashed for informality, and Clarke had to file a second one charging Jones with using two un62

Draft address, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xvm, 2-123. Innes had written to him in Philadelphia, on other matters, in January. Innes to Brown, Jan. 28, 1798, Brown Family Papers, Special Collections Department, Margaret I. King Library, University of Kentucky, Lexington. Brown's membership in the Senate may explain his earlier absences as well. e* U.S. v. Brown, DC OB A, Mar. 22, 1797, 151; June 21, 1797, 166; Nov. 20, 1797, 170; July 9, 1798, 196; DC OB B, Nov. 22, 1798, 17. 63

109

INTERNAL REVENUE LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT

registered stills. The defendant "craved oyer" (heard the charges) in June and pleaded not guilty in November. The following March, the case finally went to trial. It had been seven years since the first revenue act had been passed, and this was the first time a charge of failure to enter and pay duties had gone to a petit jury. But after hearing the evidence, Innes instructed the jury to find a special verdict "as the case was new and might create some difficulty," and the jury did as it was told. 65 This meant that the jury found facts (that the stills were in a condition to be used, that indeed they had been used, and that they had not been entered according to law), but did not determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant. Their find­ ing concluded, "If the law be for the Plaintiff, we find for the Plaintiff; if the law be for the Defendant, then we find for him." Clarke then moved for a venire facias de novo (a writ summoning another jury for a new trial) because he said that the special verdict was "imper­ fect" and insufficient for the court to base a judgment upon. Proceed­ ings were continued until the next term, when the arguments were repeated. Clarke was determined to get another trial and find a jury that would convict, and he bolstered his motion with citations from Blackstone, Bacons Abridgment, Coke's English King's Bench Reports, and Winer's Abridgment. He insisted that the prosecution "related to prop­ erty in which the government had acquired a right (i.e., the stills) and did not affect the liberty of the citizen," and concluded that it was therefore a civil prosecution. 66 The judge was "not sufficiently advised of and concerning the premises" and continued the case another term. 6 7 Four days after Brown's acquittal in November, Innes denied the mo­ tion for a new trial against Jones. Clarke then filed errors to arrest the judgment, and the case was continued again. 68 Finally, on the last day of the term in July 1799, Judge Innes read a long, carefully prepared opinion to the court. 6 9 The judge began mildly enough by recapitulating the facts and β= U.S. v. Jones, DC OB A, Mar. 22, 1797, 151; June 20, 1797, 162; Nov. 21, 1797, 173; Mar. 12, 1798, 179-182. 66 U.S. v. Jones, Draft opinion, Innes Papers, Library of Congress, xxvn, Pt. i, 8-71.